tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24529616032160123592024-03-18T21:57:47.354+00:00Sheffield Gothic Sheffield Gothic
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-38799666863441560032019-02-07T13:32:00.000+00:002019-02-07T13:32:13.766+00:00Vampires in Romantic Literature<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection.</i></div>
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<i><i>John William Polidori, TheVampyre; A Tale (1819)<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn1">[i]</a> </i></i><br />
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<i><b>This blog was originally posted on the '<a href="http://romanticlegacies.com/">Romantic Legacies</a>' blog. </b></i></div>
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The charming elegance of the aristocratic vampire, fully formed in Bram Stoker’s seminal Dracula (1897), was certainly born out of a centuries-long preoccupation with vampirism and vampire imagery that adorned politics, society, and literature. Although it may seem like a Victorian literary trademark (Dracula is exclusively responsible for this), the vampire actually flourished in England from the eighteenth century onwards. In a fairly extensive manner, literary criticism has drawn attention to Polidori’s Byronic The Vampyre 1819), and the enthralling Lord Ruthven is evidently a mishmash product of the gloomy atmosphere of the ghost story competition that took place in Byron’s villa in the summer of 1816, and Polidori’s idiosyncratic relationship with Lord Byron, of which Lord Ruthven is a lurid reference.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn2">[ii]</a> Despite setting the ground for the vampire-as-aristocrat trope, however, Polidori’s creation was not candidly original. Already, Lord Byron’s powerful reference to the vampire in his Oriental The Giaour (1813) betrays some of the cultural characteristics of vampiric figures in the nineteenth century: <br />
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But first, on earth as Vampire sent,<br />
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Thy corseshall from its tomb be rent:<br />
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Then ghastly haunt thy native place,<br />
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And suck the blood of all thy race. (ll. 755-8)<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn3">[iii]</a> </blockquote>
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Clearly, Byron’s vampire betrays echoes of hauntedness, corpse reanimation, and familial blood-sucking, which were all more or less considered hallmarks of vampirism. In a note to The Giaour, Byron further testifies to his perennial knowledge of the vampire legend: <br />
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The freshness of the face, and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly attested.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn4">[iv]</a> </blockquote>
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In placing the origins of the vampire in Hungary and Greece, Byron restates the vampire’s orientalism, and contextualises its contemporary resurrection in these countries’ oral traditions, much in a similar way as Robert Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) did before him. <br />
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From the moment of the first vampire appearance in literature, works like Gottfried August Bűrger’s ‘Lenore’ (1774) infiltrated the English imagination by adding to the orientalised tradition of the seductive, bloodthirsty vampire.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn5">[v]</a>Even before ‘Lenore’, Alexander Pope’s 1740 letter to Dr. William Oliver imports an unexpected reference to the German (literary) origin of the Vampire, coupled with folkloric knowledge of the vampire’s practices and extermination by way of driving a stake through the vampire’s heart.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn6">[vi]</a>Especially after the Augustans, by the end of the eighteenth century there is a marked rise of sensationalist Gothic literature that helped shape Gothic Romantic works. This shift to the macabre was not asymptomatic of a gradual but steady turn to individualised experience and psychology. Who is better to symbolise the grimness of reality and the human unconscious, than a creature that embodies fears and anxieties by defying all laws and boundaries? <br />
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The history and transformation of the vampire figure throughout the centuries is a colossal topic that I am not attempting to unravel here. Suffice to say that, by the time the vampire reached England, the creature seemed to be a ‘mixture of Slavic, Scandinavian, and Greek stock’,<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn7">[vii]</a> soon to evolve into an alluring character that was almost exclusively demonised and, more often than not, deeply politicised. The influence was shift; translations and literary variations started to proliferate. <br />
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Following this, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was among the first to refer to vampirism in his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads(1798). There, in the vast expanse of the deadening sea, the Mariner describes their unremitting thirst: <br />
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With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,<br />
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We could nor laugh nor wail;<br />
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Through utter drought all dumb we stood !<br />
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I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,<br />
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And cried, A sail! a sail!<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn8">[viii]</a> (ll. 149-53) </blockquote>
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This image of blood sucking appears the moment of a ghastly ship looms in the horizon, and the whole atmosphere tantalises by marking the Mariner’s gradual preparation to meet the vampiric Nightmare Life-in-Death, another meticulous reference to the vampire’s undead state, red lips, and white skin (ll. 191-3). As an embodiment of fear, Life-in-Death seems to drain the Mariner’s blood: ‘Fear at my heart, as at a cup, /My life-blood seemed to sip (ll. 200-1). Life-in-Death and her mate, Death, are interchangeable in their play on human fear. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHU2Rt6ZxJIVFqFZ8dLL4r5FGoRFihrGVW9tQ_8BlTWcRpVyzzYxrnIUTgG_VLK1Gd10Pl-blWCENh7c_7xa1CU7ftc8NprSCNj-5DOPl7BmRoIwtpO1vveRIgiKddUcmoRWVH8IEBMXy/s1600/image+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="752" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHU2Rt6ZxJIVFqFZ8dLL4r5FGoRFihrGVW9tQ_8BlTWcRpVyzzYxrnIUTgG_VLK1Gd10Pl-blWCENh7c_7xa1CU7ftc8NprSCNj-5DOPl7BmRoIwtpO1vveRIgiKddUcmoRWVH8IEBMXy/s320/image+1.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(William Strang, Death and Life-in-Death, plate 8 from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1896)</td></tr>
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Coleridge’s Geraldine in his Gothic ballad Christabel (1816)<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn9">[ix]</a>is the female seducer kind of vampire. From the beginning, she is described as romantically otherworldly, ‘Like a lady of a far countree’ with eyes that ‘glitter bright’, in such lovely voluptuousness that the narrator urges to ‘shield her! Shield sweet Christabel!’ (p. 8). It is even more suggestive that Geraldine appears in Christabel’s dream as ‘a bright green snake / Coiled around its [the dove’s] wings and neck, / And with the dove it heaves and stirs, / Swelling its neck as she swelled hers’ (p. 19). The mastiff’s ‘angry moan’ when it sees Geraldine (p. 6), Geraldine’s snaky eyes (p. 20), and the fact that Geraldine seems not able to pass through water, are implicit signs of Geraldine’s vampiric qualities and demonisation. Coleridge’s Geraldine is certainly one of the most distinct depictions of the eroticised female vampire, as in J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla (1872), which seems deeply influenced by Coleridge’s Christabel. As in the latter, Carmilla features a temptress female vampire that combines the Byronic vampire’s aristocratic lineage and Geraldine’s seductiveness. The plotline is also similar, but LeFanu’s novel moves more conspicuously along the grotesquery of the German School of Horror, of which ‘Monk’ Lewis is a famous example. As Richard Norton claims, German horror tales ‘were very influential on English works, and some of the Gothic novelists, especially Matthew Gregory Lewis, were well versed in German folk tales and ballads of the supernatural’: more precisely, these ‘Sensationalistic ‘raw head and bloody bones’ are more characteristic of the School of Horrorand partly help to define it. Full-bodied demons have replaced the filmy spectres of the School of Terror’.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn10">[x]</a> In contrast to Christabel, Carmilla’s open description of gloated vampirism is finalised by an even more informed but rough-hewn description of exorcising Countess Mircala’s demonic influence: <br />
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Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head was next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory has never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn11">[xi]</a> <br />
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We clearly see LeFanu’s reiteration of yearlong folkloric traditions connected to the interment, staking, and decapitation of vampires, described in this passage with the coolness and precision of contemporary scientific and legal nineteenth-century treatises and records on vampirism and animality. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFAuQXt8Dg62itYtYCXNf5dV9L_SkzPRhjyRAVCtWtVTDN9OZhKDCZKMKAFuV8nJLGrSMxYIYK8xd2naSF2p6JEdwYuNuqMuqi38MufNw8IeVqwIAQCf-pEM4yZ6Qe8BV5p4oMt3lEm0HR/s1600/image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="1024" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFAuQXt8Dg62itYtYCXNf5dV9L_SkzPRhjyRAVCtWtVTDN9OZhKDCZKMKAFuV8nJLGrSMxYIYK8xd2naSF2p6JEdwYuNuqMuqi38MufNw8IeVqwIAQCf-pEM4yZ6Qe8BV5p4oMt3lEm0HR/s400/image+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(From The Dark Blue by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Friston" style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">D. H. Friston</a><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">, 1872)</span></td></tr>
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As in Christabel, we find in Carmilla this association of vampirism with animality; Laura’s account of ‘a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat’ is pertinent to the way the vampire bordered on the animal, and worse, because of its ghastly shapeshifting and its status as macabre predator:<br />
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It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn12">[xii]</a> </blockquote>
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This affinity between vampirism and animality is also evident in verbal and pictorial depictions of vampirism and vampire bats in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which could also acquire socio-political dimensions. For example, accounts on British periodicals in 1819 describe the Vampire bat as <br />
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(…) in general about a foot long, and the spreading of its wings nearly four feet; but it is sometimes found much larger, and some specimens have been seen of six feet in extent. Its general colour is a deep reddish brown. The head is shaped like that of a fox; the nose is sharp and black; and the tongue pointed.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn13">[xiii]</a> </blockquote>
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The almost supernatural way in which the body of the vampire bat is depicted is also evident in Groom’s record, who also points to the way such ‘creatures’ were reported to ‘come at night’, ‘suck blood’, and even kill.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn14">[xiv]</a>William Blake was extremely interested in vegetable, zoology, and insect studies, and his representation of Los’s Spectre in Plate 6 of his Jerusalem (1804-8) bears something of the vampire bat description, especially in its physiology/stature. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-4AtnlRc4_3M9H3ZSxQtPUcNp2H6_fHDVA6ZVztxUQdaGrqGNXB0piLYyV-yjBswAYBLUuf8FQp3bwvnpQ1lIItJZEnUcdNw2OKdnBvSfH1ZLOmhyphenhyphenCg3SeH5laPbmrga7jSg5VF8V-ui/s1600/Blake_Jerusalem_Plate_6_Copy_E.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-4AtnlRc4_3M9H3ZSxQtPUcNp2H6_fHDVA6ZVztxUQdaGrqGNXB0piLYyV-yjBswAYBLUuf8FQp3bwvnpQ1lIItJZEnUcdNw2OKdnBvSfH1ZLOmhyphenhyphenCg3SeH5laPbmrga7jSg5VF8V-ui/s400/Blake_Jerusalem_Plate_6_Copy_E.jpg" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 6)</td></tr>
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Another example of illustrated vampirism in Blake’s portfolio is his The Ghost of a Flea (1819-20), both tempera and paper, which represents an anthropomorphic flea that is drawn invariably with fangs and a cup of blood on its hand. Considering Blake’s position as a visionary poet that responded to a personal calling, The Ghost of a Flea can be seen as something more than Blake’s illustration for John Varley’s Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828). The choice of a flea as a symbol of parasitism is especially political when it comes to Blake’s representations of the fallen world, and the fallen body. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPxBZddJJ8m1-9azjqxwS6RN8jOWNmHWiHaczFYU08yYrUNJMD3lBdc6qCMbFMceLWMU4JMyaY-ARDfHHWyoV0qRuY6awBcwbfCEET-8NJSBehmCSVp3R7LlhZdvoGyUGibvdbOnEfCY0t/s1600/image+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1173" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPxBZddJJ8m1-9azjqxwS6RN8jOWNmHWiHaczFYU08yYrUNJMD3lBdc6qCMbFMceLWMU4JMyaY-ARDfHHWyoV0qRuY6awBcwbfCEET-8NJSBehmCSVp3R7LlhZdvoGyUGibvdbOnEfCY0t/s320/image+4.jpg" width="234" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea)</td></tr>
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<br />Political vampirism answered contemporary needs to talk about a diseased body politic drained by external threat, whether in Britain or abroad. The vampire turned into a symbol way into the nineteenth century, appropriated and utilised for political commentary. In his 1882 political cartoon, for instance, George Frederick Keller finely illustrates blood-sucking landlords as vampires who feed off their tenants and then burn in hell for their sins. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfZf_SHgE2DgFs_eB2kJ9BM7BdYpImxi77BR86l0TWuEJQp0UWNy99k_VtgDJZqz7n0a16ZeUKkZakK_GBmoDgBNhuwdZeDBmCKptiSDJWL8cOOX1dJpdI-U60Lr3nObTChOTlXDRmklwX/s1600/image+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="211" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfZf_SHgE2DgFs_eB2kJ9BM7BdYpImxi77BR86l0TWuEJQp0UWNy99k_VtgDJZqz7n0a16ZeUKkZakK_GBmoDgBNhuwdZeDBmCKptiSDJWL8cOOX1dJpdI-U60Lr3nObTChOTlXDRmklwX/s400/image+6.jpg" width="353" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Thomas Nast, Political Vampire, Harper’s Weekly (1885))</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuVZHiIo2HWxgsDTntkUwjePjQD1eE4H23hQ7ovintGrlsRJrB7oX1spZVPzYADmoM5ZpizvCHCVfvVAaCGnyEx2abSKLnuQkCiLqMvuA-J4soSd2J6NeVLW7r4chDJyJGpIpG0vneZUCa/s1600/image+7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="732" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuVZHiIo2HWxgsDTntkUwjePjQD1eE4H23hQ7ovintGrlsRJrB7oX1spZVPzYADmoM5ZpizvCHCVfvVAaCGnyEx2abSKLnuQkCiLqMvuA-J4soSd2J6NeVLW7r4chDJyJGpIpG0vneZUCa/s400/image+7.jpeg" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(The Irish Vampire, London, 1885)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcu9If1vDFNfoggAP3Y0R0PaQm98CSEf29QfLdfxWIQcfUC7nUGdC6Emr0MAumZBvaFQr2-JSOkaHwRxum9wLwtjBENbD-HIFcwkCErvZfsqGOi78prV3JJj_Rg_2zV4w2Syud8Ndne0u/s1600/image+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="761" data-original-width="1024" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcu9If1vDFNfoggAP3Y0R0PaQm98CSEf29QfLdfxWIQcfUC7nUGdC6Emr0MAumZBvaFQr2-JSOkaHwRxum9wLwtjBENbD-HIFcwkCErvZfsqGOi78prV3JJj_Rg_2zV4w2Syud8Ndne0u/s320/image+8.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(George Frederick Keller, The Vampires, Or the Landlords of San Francisco, 1882.)</td></tr>
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<br />What all these political illustrations have in common with literary vampirism is a sharp attention to the animalistic qualities of the vampire, and the vampire’s profound crossbreeding. We have already encountered Geraldine’s portrayal as a snake, and Carmilla’s transformations into a black cat. Similarly, we find in John Keats’s Lamia (1820) a description of Lamia’s body that very much resembles that of a fantastic snake-beast: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,<br />
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;<br />
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,<br />
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d.(ll. 47-50)<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn15">[xv]</a> </blockquote>
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Her enthralment of the Corinthian youth named Lycius places her in the literary tradition of the demonic seductress who entices the unsuspected youth to ‘unperplex’d delight and pleasure’ (ll. 327), at least until she is melted by Apollonius’s gaze: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Do not all charms fly<br />
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?<br />
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:<br />
We know her woof, her texture; she is given<br />
In the dull catalogue of common things.<br />
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,<br />
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,<br />
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—<br />
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made<br />
The tender-person'dLamia melt into a shade. (ll. 229-38) </blockquote>
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As creatures that defy reason, then, vampires cannot stand rational scrutiny, and dissolve before any scientific explanation of them finds solid ground. As Groom says, vampires signified a ‘black illumination to the Enlightenment, by challenging the epistemological foundations of rationalism and empirical knowledge’.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn16">[xvi]</a>And whether or not explicitly vampiric, demon creatures like the vampire suffuse Romantic literature and foreground the reader’s greatest fears, inviting the reader to participate in the complex interplay between victim and predator. In doing that, we are in a similar position to Keats’s knight at arms in his La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819), who sees ‘pale kings and princes’ (ll. 37) with ‘starved lips’ (ll. 41)<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn17">[xvii]</a> in his dream, forewarning him of the dangerous belle that lures him. <br />
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To go back to male vampires in Romantic literature, it was certainly ‘a most attractive demon’ especially ‘to the second generation of Romantics’; although not conventionally vampiric, the Byronic Hero ‘already had many of the mythic qualities of the vampire: here was the melancholy libertine in the open shirt, the nocturnal lover and destroyer, the maudlin, self-pitying, and moody titan, only a few years away from Nietzsche’s Superman.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn18">[xviii]</a> Byron himself was to provide a most vivid inspiration for Polidori’s 1819 novel. However, even before this time, the fascination of German vampires quite captivated poets like Coleridge who gradually move away from literal depictions of vampires to a more psychologised symbolism of the vampire figure and the qualities of vampirism.<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_edn19">[xix]</a>Real or symbolic, however, vampires made their way into Romantic literature in the context of emergent Gothic Romanticisms that shared in vampire discourses of the time, and were ready to re-invent vampirism in new and political ways. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Elli Karampela is a PhD Researcher at the School of English of the University of Sheffield. She is mainly interested in English Romanticism, and all things dark in relation to English Romanticism. She is an assiduous reader of (particularly Gothic) eighteenth and nineteenth-century texts, and a proud member of Sheffield Gothic. She is also a representative of the Messolonghi Byron Society, as well as the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at the University of Sheffield, and an organiser of the 'Culture Vultures' reading group.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a>Polidori, John William. The Vampyre; A Tale (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819), p. 28. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref2">[ii]</a> Groom, Nick, The Vampire: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 109. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref3">[iii]</a>George, Gordon, Lord Byron, TheGiaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale (London: John Murray, 1814), p. 37. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref4">[iv]</a> George, Gordon, Lord Byron, TheGiaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale (London: John Murray, 1814), n. 38, p. 38. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref5">[v]</a> Groom, p. 99. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref6">[vi]</a>Twitchell, James, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (USA: Duke University Press, 1981), p. 8. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref7">[vii]</a>Ibid., p. 7. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref8">[viii]</a> Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ‘The Rime of the AncyentMarinere’ in Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 51-78 (p. 58). <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref9">[ix]</a> Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Christabel and the Lyrical and Imaginative Poems of S.T. Coleridge, ed. by Algernon Charles Swinburne (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1869) <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref10">[x]</a>Norton, Rictor, Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840 (London: Leicester University Press, 2000), p. 106. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref11">[xi]</a> LeFanu, Sheridan J., Carmilla (Doylestown: Wildside Press), pp. 142-3. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref12">[xii]</a> LeFanu, Carmilla, p. 69. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref13">[xiii]</a> ‘Natural History of the Vampyre Bat’, in Fictitious History of the Vampyre, The Imperial Magazine (British Periodicals, 1819), pp. 235-240 (p. 240). In the same entry, letting aside that the Vampyre bat is, according to the writer, vegetarian, the association of the bat with the figure of the vampire, a creature that devours the victim with such voracity ‘as to cause the blood to flow from all the passages of their bodies, and even from the very pores of their skin’, marks the creature as bordering on monstrosity (p. 237). <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref14">[xiv]</a> Groom, p. 112. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref15">[xv]</a>Keats, John, ‘Lamia’, in Poetical Works (London: Macmillan, 1884; Bartleby.com, 1999) <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/126/">www.bartleby.com/126/</a>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref16">[xvi]</a> Groom, p. 93. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref17">[xvii]</a>Keats, John, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, in Poetical Works (London: Macmillan, 1884; Bartleby.com, 1999) <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/126/">www.bartleby.com/126/</a>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref18">[xviii]</a>Twitchell, p. 75. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="file:///U:/ManW10/Downloads/Vampires%20in%20Romantic%20literature.doc#_ednref19">[xix]</a>Ibid., p. 156.<br />
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com71tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-30104712411517105162019-02-05T12:12:00.000+00:002019-02-05T12:13:12.201+00:00CFP: Gothic Spectacle and Spectatorship<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Sheffield Gothic are pleased to share the following call for papers for a one day symposium on 'Gothic Spectacle and Spectatorship' at Lancaster University, 1st June 2019. </div>
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The deadline for abstracts is 29th March 2019. For more details, you can email the conference team at: gothicspectacle@gmail.com</div>
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#GothsAssemble </div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com98tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-14757006966865743362019-01-05T15:18:00.000+00:002019-01-10T11:36:10.581+00:00Considering Crimson Peak<br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To round-off
the Autumn Semester in style, Sheffield Gothic assembled for a festive film
screening of <i>Crimson Peak</i> (2015). OK,
it might not be a Christmas classic, but it does feature plenty of snow. The
film is a visual delight - and that’s not just because of Tom Hiddleston. Guillermo
del Toro’s meticulous attention to detail as he pays homage to the Gothic
romance makes this the perfect choice for a discussion on the theme of Gothic
aesthetics and archetypes. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Starring Mia
Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam, and Sheffield Gothic favourite,
Tom Hiddleston (yes, there were fangirl screams every time he uttered the words
‘Gothic romance’ during the press tour), <i>Crimson
Peak</i> tells the story of Edith Cushing, a young American heiress, as she
uncovers the dark secrets behind the warning ‘Beware Crimson Peak’,
prophetically issued by the ghost of her mother. Working in the Radcliffian
tradition, del Toro experiments with the concept of the explained supernatural.
In <i>Crimson Peak</i> the ghosts are real,
but they serve to provide a warning as the true threat lies with the living,
not the dead. Rather than present medieval Europe as a place of danger and
degeneracy, England becomes the archaic site of transgression.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Edith, an aspiring
author who eschews saccharine romances in favour of writing ghost stories, is
immediately (and understandably) drawn to Thomas Sharpe, the dashing if
somewhat mysterious English Baronet who has travelled to America in search of
an investor to back the invention he hopes will maximise the profits from the rich
deposits of red clay lying beneath the family seat. Not only is he a tall, dark
and handsome aristocrat, but he’s well-dressed, a great dancer, has really soft
hands - and he loves his sister, Lucille. You know what they say: if it all sounds
too good to be true, then it probably is! Struggling with the burden of
inheritance, in terms of the ancestral house and the secrets it contains,
Thomas is one of a dying breed and stands in direct contrast to the successful,
self-made men in America. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">After
marrying Edith, he duly takes his new bride back to his crumbling Gothic pile,
but Allerdale Hall is slowly sinking into the blood red clay it stands upon.
It’s all very ‘Fall of the House of Usher.’ Rich in literary allusion, it’s not
hard to spot the references to texts including <i>Rebecca</i> and <i>Jane Eyre</i>, in
fact you’d think Thomas’ declaration of love, paraphrasing Bront</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">ë</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">’s cord of communion speech, would have set alarm bells ringing
for someone as well-versed in Gothic literature as Edith. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thinking
about it, this would have been the perfect opportunity for a game of Gothic
Reading Group Bingo! It ticks all the boxes you’d expect as del Toro takes the
staples of the Gothic romance to make a visually arresting film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cue Gothic heroine with great hair fleeing
from an isolated country house in her blood-stained, white nightgown.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Acknowledging
the centrality of the architectural setting to the genre, del Toro set aside seven
months for Allerdale Hall to be built. The level of craftsmanship expected from
the set designers results in a beautiful rendering of a terrifying space. Multiple
items of furniture were replicated so that larger versions could be used to
make Edith appear to be diminishing in stature as she weakens. Similarly, her
costume sleeves balloon as the film progresses, swamping her tiny frame.
Although Edith may physically deteriorate, she remains mentally strong,
retaining her will and resolve. This is very much a female-centric narrative,
appealing to the female gaze. Edith and Lucille are successfully used to
illustrate conflicting types of love without either woman being depicted in the
role of a passive victim. It is Thomas who turns out to be ineffectual as either
hero or villain. Lucille is the powerful force, using him as attractive bait to
drive the plot. Whilst that plot may be predictable, the high production values
of this beautifully shot film means that you can still revel in the set and
costume designs even if you can guess where the narrative is going.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The focus on
aesthetics is not intended as mere eye candy. Del Toro jokingly refers to his
use of ‘eye protein’; the content is not merely beautiful, it tells a story.
However, when the film was released back in 2015 it disappointed those hoping
for a horror film, with many film critics commenting that it was a clear case
of style over substance:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">'Aflame with color and awash in
symbolism, this undeniably ravishing yet ultimately disappointing haunted-house
meller is all surface and no substance, sinking under the weight of its own
self-importance into the sanguine muck below.'</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> (Peter Dubruge, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Variety)</i></span><i> </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i>'The film is too busy,
and in some ways too gross, to sustain an effective atmosphere of dread. It
tumbles into pastiche just when it should be swooning and sighing with earnest
emotion.' </i>(</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">A.O. Scott<i>, The New York Times</i>)</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i>'It may be a little overwrought for
some tastes, borderline camp at points, but if you're partial to a bit of
Victorian romance with Hammer horror gloop and big, frilly night-gowns, GDT
delivers an uncommon treat.' </i>(</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">Dan Jolin, <i>Empire</i>)</span></span></blockquote>
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<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As it turns
out, we are partial to a bit of Victorian romance (and the frillier the
nightgowns, the better), but then we are pretty much the perfect audience for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crimson Peak</i>. Our discussion led us to
conclude that a certain level of understanding of the development of the Gothic
romance is needed to fully appreciate the nuances of del Toro’s vision. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crimson Peak</i> didn’t prove to be a hit at
the box-office, grossing just $74 million worldwide against its $55 million
budget, largely, we suspect, due to the film being miss-sold as a horror. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On a final
note, if del Toro wants to direct an adaptation of Radcliffe’s <i>Udolpho</i>, we’d be totally on board! </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Hannah Moss is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield exploring the figure of the artist in Eighteenth Century Literature. With a passion for all things Eighteenth Century, Gothic, and art related, Hannah especially loves country houses, but has yet to encounter one quite like Crimson Peak in real life (although looks forward to the day where she will encounter Tom Hiddleston in one!)</i></span></div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-72842579616727550912018-12-24T11:00:00.000+00:002018-12-24T12:07:37.272+00:00Dark Tales for Dark Nights: Ghost Story Edition<i>Join us on this dark night as Sheffield Gothic revives the
tradition of telling Ghost Stories on Christmas Eve by recommending some of our
favourites. </i><o:p></o:p><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw46z0uNMn6X-hITBYsTeZ0GHujwfllohOWaEf1gnK4D6FLIRnaIvz9MrBOQTY6kIAUcNRSOzKvjog-E9_njnoVBKEpo16AtMqWUCe6n76Q_er9o6x1N5AsqaftQ_RbO4dSFz_NZKq4DY6/s1600/21148105._UY424_SS424_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw46z0uNMn6X-hITBYsTeZ0GHujwfllohOWaEf1gnK4D6FLIRnaIvz9MrBOQTY6kIAUcNRSOzKvjog-E9_njnoVBKEpo16AtMqWUCe6n76Q_er9o6x1N5AsqaftQ_RbO4dSFz_NZKq4DY6/s320/21148105._UY424_SS424_.jpg" width="239" /></a><b><i><u>The Open Door</u></i><u> (1882) by Charlotte
Riddell <o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
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<i>Amy Jackson</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The Open Door</i> is a classic Victorian ghost story
which shares much with the popular sensation novel. I like this story because
the premise is simple: there’s a haunted house in which a door will not stay
locked. The narrator is a sceptic, he doesn’t believe in ghosts or the
supernatural, and this makes him confident that he can shut the door, ‘take the
ghost in hand’, and receive the reward of two sovereigns. However, there’s a
dark secret lurking behind the open door and it’s up to the narrator to
discover what truly happened. <i>The Open Door</i> is wonderfully eerie and a
great story to read on a cold winter night. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606251.txt">here</a>.</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59CwvVCAOSsTfGOAg400WDWpblYDjZjPjwlithnkqxKokG7HKzhvo4eAqQpXfxolZ0JPFXTg9ABkUmNGs5OenHhq4lSia94__WZSAZchTZ-QXLWW7xGWHoLu4Lmm9iCcLK4dJU8__Dlof/s1600/Young+girl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59CwvVCAOSsTfGOAg400WDWpblYDjZjPjwlithnkqxKokG7HKzhvo4eAqQpXfxolZ0JPFXTg9ABkUmNGs5OenHhq4lSia94__WZSAZchTZ-QXLWW7xGWHoLu4Lmm9iCcLK4dJU8__Dlof/s320/Young+girl.jpg" width="264" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Young Girl</i> c.1670-5</td></tr>
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<b><u>‘Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter’ (1839)
by J.S. Le Fanu <o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
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<b><u></u></b><br />
<b><u></u></b></div>
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<i>Hannah Moss</i><br />
<br />
Shut the door, light a candle and curl up with a collection
of J.S. Le Fanu's short stories. ‘Schalken the Painter’ is a Gothic tale
combining the demon lover trope with a dash of Dutch realism – what more could
you want on a cold winter’s night? Inspired by the atmospheric works of
Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706), an artist renowned for his mastery of
chiaroscuro, Le Fanu imagines a dark story behind one of his candlelit
paintings. I won’t give too much away, but suffice to say a moment of horror
results in a burst of creativity for the splenetic artist, and the resulting
painting becomes a kind of ‘found manuscript’ inherited by successive
generations along with the story that inspired it. I love how this story
juxtaposes realist art of the Dutch Golden Age with the supernatural to comment
on the precarious place of women in society:</div>
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<i>‘There are some pictures, which impress one, I know not
how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and
combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but
scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. There is in that
strange picture, something that stamps it as the representation of a reality.’</i></blockquote>
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/lefanu/1780/">here</a>.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOXDBBokeFiYssTxa6hJCq95J2EuRMadMS3WVx0QEbFX_G7-bg5cB4RLaT7nB08IT0QUpwXSH3FU7waALvtep1JpoU9VfIoV9bkE6Uy3I_12trE5ekHiFxMr5eEcWAXsY5C6RQtLAJ83PI/s1600/615PJQLddsL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="325" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOXDBBokeFiYssTxa6hJCq95J2EuRMadMS3WVx0QEbFX_G7-bg5cB4RLaT7nB08IT0QUpwXSH3FU7waALvtep1JpoU9VfIoV9bkE6Uy3I_12trE5ekHiFxMr5eEcWAXsY5C6RQtLAJ83PI/s320/615PJQLddsL.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<b><u>‘The Signal Man’ (1866) by Charles Dickens <o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
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<i>Ming Panha<o:p></o:p></i><br />
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Dickens might be known as a creator of a throng of grotesque
and comic characters in his own brand of realism, yet ‘The Signal-Man’,
published in 1866 in a Christmas edition of All the Year Round, begins its
story at a very dark and quiet night, near the train station, simply with an
everyman character. ‘The Signal Man’ features only two main characters and
plays with quietude, loneliness, terror, and impenetrability of truth. When the
signal-man at a train station tells the narrator about his encounter with weird
apparitions at the tunnel, with no flickering lights at its end, the story
leads you deeper into the dark, where the reader might also encounter the
unknown. Based on true story of a train accident in the nineteenth century, this
ghost story is simple and ‘real’ and yet mysterious and fantastical. Also, in
our period with unstoppable technological advancement, ‘The Signal-Man’ still
speaks to us that, despite scientific progress, the world can still be unsafe,
unfair, and inscrutable. ‘The Signal-Man’, to me, can perfectly function like
it has been doing since its publication as a ghost story for Christmas time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54sm/">here</a>.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLRuiaTeoVj1QB5YLgwBDm99HNr9B3A4Vl1PI6jFJg5iN5XYgaQAkbRmroX69X_4KDIc18594yvtawBkLxL950kiDyqaEem4YupWQ5c-cEPH6jHUj7SCZ9O6k_uLof9FsFTsb3p5SRijUQ/s1600/18522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1021" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLRuiaTeoVj1QB5YLgwBDm99HNr9B3A4Vl1PI6jFJg5iN5XYgaQAkbRmroX69X_4KDIc18594yvtawBkLxL950kiDyqaEem4YupWQ5c-cEPH6jHUj7SCZ9O6k_uLof9FsFTsb3p5SRijUQ/s400/18522.jpg" width="255" /></a><b><u>The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon</u></b><br />
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<i>Lauren Nixon</i><br />
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon, perhaps best known for 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret, was one of the most popular and prolific writers of the Victorian period. In addition her novels and her founding of the Belgravia magazine, Braddon was also well known for her supernatural stoies - some of which were collected by the British Library a few years ago as part of their Terror and Wonder exhibition in a volume entitled The Face in the Glass. Braddon's supernatural and ghost stories excel in the sinister, able to elicit that creeping, hairs raised on the back of the neck fear that's hard to shake off even after you've finished reading. Whilst any of Braddon's tales would make for excellent Christmas Eve reading - The Shadow in the Corner and Old Lady Ducayne were both close contenders - but for my money it has to the chilling (pun intended) The Cold Embrace. The story concerns a nameless German artist - 'young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless' - who falls in love with his beautiful cousin Gertrude, pledging himself to her with a unique ring shaped like a gold serpent to symbolise eternity. In many way a classic Gothic tale of the blindness of young love and the fallibility of youth, the way that Braddon builds suspense and dread of the course of the story is really fantastic.<br />
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605261h.html#ch01">here</a>. </b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1oI5G7WqGHirj9qtygLwqTU2nsJw0_4w8BJrW87KyzJOyv8PyCS_O7PE7-KWkKBXgLWZUbLbn3Yk-kS6iVbVfvpSidNP_j2IeJl-oGSJvgwpeGBIUBtScMB2s1gHhxWvm2zo1-_Eqk48/s1600/Whistle_and_I%2527ll_come_to_you_illustration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="605" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1oI5G7WqGHirj9qtygLwqTU2nsJw0_4w8BJrW87KyzJOyv8PyCS_O7PE7-KWkKBXgLWZUbLbn3Yk-kS6iVbVfvpSidNP_j2IeJl-oGSJvgwpeGBIUBtScMB2s1gHhxWvm2zo1-_Eqk48/s320/Whistle_and_I%2527ll_come_to_you_illustration.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1904 illustration by James McBryde</td></tr>
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<b><u>'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad' (1904) By M R James</u></b></div>
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<i>Mary Going</i><br />
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Published as part of <i>Ghost Stories of an Antiquary</i>, M R
James’ first collection of ghost stories based on tales he had written to
entertain his friends and students at Christmas, ‘Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To
You, My Lad’ (the title of which is taken from a poem by Robert Burns) is a perfect example of James’ ghost story telling credentials. It tells the tale of a Cambridge professor who finds a mysterious whistle while holidaying on the south east coast of England. This whistle has two Latin inscriptions, and of course, after the professor blows the whistle, strange, terrifying, and ghostly things start to happen. As a story that expertly builds its suspense, it will leave you terrified: its perhaps no surprise, then, that it has been adapted twice by the BBC, the first of which (originally broadcast in 1968) inspired the BBC's <i>A Ghost Story for Christmas </i>series. Both adaptations are well worth watching, but there is something about the 2010 version that is both terrifying and heartbreaking so do be prepared if you watch it. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/mr/antiquary/chapter7.html">here</a>.</b></div>
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<b>And you can also watch the BBC's 1968 version (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYjtxHHjZ00">here</a>) and the 2010 version (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSZMUpUXNY">here</a>). </b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithVTxZdkta6tKvYOGXLa5oOZzbn0tAPd2S78YeAgigcfc9f0TbFfI7-rcKXNga3Exw3sDgQ8YApLNgyurLJTftSauCVZ5CtIViFT7w2qjAvYdavjItb-uQUGFRYTYPJfZQVvC7kkuJKMt/s1600/Turn+of+the+screw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithVTxZdkta6tKvYOGXLa5oOZzbn0tAPd2S78YeAgigcfc9f0TbFfI7-rcKXNga3Exw3sDgQ8YApLNgyurLJTftSauCVZ5CtIViFT7w2qjAvYdavjItb-uQUGFRYTYPJfZQVvC7kkuJKMt/s320/Turn+of+the+screw.jpg" width="211" /></a><b><u>The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James</u></b><i> </i><br />
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<i>Carly Stevenson</i><br />
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<b><u></u></b>A quintessential Christmas ghost story and one of the finest novellas in the English language, James’ Gothic tale begins with a fireside reading from a mysterious manuscript and ends with chilling ambiguity. If this isn’t the perfect opening passage to a ghost story, I don’t know what is: ‘The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.‘ Yuletide (or should I say Ghoultide) Greetings! <b><u></u></b><br />
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/209/209-h/209-h.htm">here</a>. </b><br />
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<b><u>'The Old Nurses Story' (1852) by Elizabeth Gaskell </u></b><br />
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<i>Sheffield Gothic</i><br />
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We would be remiss if we didn't mention this classic ghost story by Elizabeth Gaskell, which we discussed at last year's Nineteenth Century Christmas Ghost story reading group (jointly organised by Sheffield Gothic and the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies). This fantastic story by Gaskell, master of the traditional ghost story, tells the tale of a young girl named Rosamond and her nurse who end up living at Manor House with the old aunt Miss Furnival upon the death of Rosamond's parents. Curious events begin to unfold as Rosamond is lured into the snow by a little girl, although it is pointed out that there is only one set of footsteps in the snow...<br />
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<b>You can read the full text <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605581h.html">here</a><i>.</i></b><br />
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-77346766518020950452018-12-17T11:00:00.000+00:002018-12-17T11:00:02.609+00:00Considering Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Oscar Wilde’s <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray </i>(1890) is a Victorian fin de siècle novel which fully embraces the Gothic aesthetics of the supernatural and the hidden room. The novel engages with well-established archetypes and tropes, such as the Faustian pact. In the preface to <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, Wilde states that ‘there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book’ and Wilde’s novel further develops this idea by reimagining the trope of the Faustian pact which is usually presented as a moral tale but may, in fact, just be a tale with no moral at all. Wilde took cues from his early Gothic predecessors, who altered the story of the Faustian pact by removing the historical and legendary figure of Johann Georg Faust, as he used the trope to comment on the Victorian aristocracy. There is no clear pact in the novel, no moment when Dorian signs on the dotted line using his own blood, but a transaction does take place sometime after Dorian exclaims: ‘If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! [...] I would give my soul for that!’ In this moment, Dorian unknowingly barters his soul for eternal youth, thus allowing him to freely partake in everything that Victorian aristocratic society has to offer without losing his treasured beauty. This is not a classic Faustian pact, where a soul is exchanged for knowledge and/or the servitude of a demon, but it is a Faustian pact that belongs to the Victorian aristocracy as it is in exchange for youth, beauty, and ‘sin’.</div>
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Dorian occupies the role of the Faust figure in the novel, even if he is not a typical rendition of this character, but his legacy lies beyond this archetypal role which was passed down to Wilde from the Renaissance era. Instead, Dorian has become a Gothic archetype which is separate from the Faust figure, no longer representing the consequences of diabolical temptation but the hedonism and decadence of the Victorian aristocracy. Dorian’s main characteristics as an archetype are his indulgence in sex, drugs, and art, and his ownership of a secret portrait which reveals the horrors of his misdeeds. Dorian cannot truly be Dorian unless he has a Calibanesque portrait stashed away in an attic or some sort of hidden room. It has become the defining feature of his entire character.</div>
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Some modern adaptations, such as <i>Penny Dreadful</i> (2014-2016), remove Dorian from his own story and his Faustian origins and implant him into other stories as a villain or an anti-hero. Dorian’s descent into hedonism and violence, tempted by the vice character of Lord Henry, is often reduced to a forgotten backstory which is simply not as interesting as Dorian’s immortality or his excessive lifestyle. He becomes a caricature of his original character and, in attempt to make him somehow sexier or ‘edgier’, certain aspects of his personality and story are exaggerated, including his drug use and sexual exploits, in order to fulfil the archetypal characteristics which have been assigned to him. Dorian, when he is removed from his original context, is often portrayed as an indulgent character who throws lavish parties and occasionally commits murder and other violent crimes. He’s never fully satisfied by his decedent lifestyle and his immortality leaves him with a hunger for new experiences and adventures. Dorian is insatiable, violent, and reckless but he lacks any of the naivety that he possessed in the novel which distinguished him from other Faustian figures. Without his childlike qualities, including his ‘wilful, petulant manner’ which is so prevalent in the opening chapters of the novel, Dorian merely becomes another Faust figure who has sold his soul for immortality.</div>
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Oscar Wilde’s <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i> may be a novel which is immersed in Gothic traditions, borrowing old archetypes and classic Gothic aesthetics, but the character of Dorian has a life beyond his own novel. Dorian is now an archetypal character which, to modern viewers and readers, represents decadence and debauchery; but this version of Dorian is, in fact, only a caricature of Wilde’s original character. </div>
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<i>Amy Jackson is a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield researching the relationship between Renaissance drama and the Gothic. While she may know everything there is to know about Faustian pacts, she assures us that she has never made one herself, and definitely does not have a secret painting hidden somewhere in her house. </i></div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-84772810366559172112018-11-09T12:13:00.000+00:002018-12-14T16:29:45.758+00:00Considering The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
‘ON the north-east coast of Scotland, in the most romantic part of the Highlands, stood the Castle of Athlin; an edifice built on the summit of a rock whose base was in the sea. This pile was venerable from its antiquity, and from its Gothic structure; but more venerable from the virtues which it enclosed.’</blockquote>
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It would be easy to overlook <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i>, the first of Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic romances. ‘A Highland Story’, published in 1789, the novel lacks the depth and complexities that would define Radcliffe’s later works, such as<i> The Mysteries of Udolpho</i> (1794) and <i>The Italian</i> (1797). In comparison with the novels that followed it, <i>Athlin and Dunbayne</i> could seem somewhat brief: the heroines appear thinly sketched, motivations are under explored and the whole thing is over far too quickly. But regardless of this <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i> is an important text, key in the shaping of the Gothic tradition. And, let’s be honest, it’s pretty good fun too. </div>
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The Gothic novel’s roots in the romances of the Medieval period are evident in <i>Athlin and Dunbayne</i>’s feudal setting, and there are echoes throughout the text of Richard Hurd’s 1762 treatise <i>Letters on Chivalry and Romance</i>. Though Hurd had previously shunned the ‘Gothick’ romances for their supernatural elements – because how could one see value in something full of dragons and giants, heaven forbid – in <i>Letters </i>Hurd defended the romance’s employment of the Gothic as a means of an analogy in which to explore and discuss contemporary issues. In <i>Athlin and Dunbayne</i>, rather than the supernatural, the analogy is in the ‘ancient’ feudal past itself. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Meme created by Carly Stevenson)</td></tr>
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<i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i> tells the story of two castles, as the title would suggest, and two families. We learn in the opening pages that twelve years before the events of the novel the ‘noble’ Earl of Athlin has been ambushed and slain by Malcolm, the Baron of Dunbayne, a ‘proud, oppressive, revengeful’ man. Unwilling to risk the lives of her people, the widowed Countess Matilda had chosen to not pursue vengeance and instead retreated into the castle to raise her children. Athlin, ‘venerable from its antiquity, and from its Gothic structure but more venerable from the virtues which it enclosed’, is characterised by the idealised society that Matilda presides over whose virtues are exemplified in her children, Osbert and Mary. </div>
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In Osbert chivalry and sensibility are blended to create the Gothic hero: ‘nature had given him a mind ardent and susceptible, to which education had added refinement and expansion. The visions of genius were bright in his imagination, and his heart, unchilled by the touch of disappointment, glowed with all the warmth of benevolence.’ Osbert is a skilled soldier and respected leader, but able to temper his martial passions through his engagement and appreciation of nature and the sublime. During one such wander to calm his anger over his father’s death at Malcolm’s hands Osbert meets and forms a friendship with Alleyn, a young peasant of strangely noble features (spoiler – he’s actually the displaced heir to Dunbayne!). After learning of Malcolm’s poor stewardship his lands and all round bad guyness, Osbert decides that he can longer suffer his father’s murder to go unrevenged and rallies Athlin in a mission against Dunbayne. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Meme created by Celine Frohn)</td></tr>
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What follows is a feudal family drama, full of human passions and misdeeds that is ultimately resolved in the restoration of a rightful heir and two marriages that restore order to the two castles. It may not be the best of Radcliffe’s works, but in <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i> the foundations are laid for the conventions that would define her as one of the most popular authors of the late eighteenth century. The use of the ‘ancient past’, devoid of the supernatural is of particular interest here – there is no hint of a spectre or suggestion of unnatural forces. Rather what takes focus is the ills and evils which man can commit against man, the passions which warp hearts and the consequences of such actions: the lands that surround Dunbayne suffer because of the human malevolence that resides in the castle. </div>
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So, yes, compared to its mighty three and four volume siblings <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i> struggles to hold its own. But for anyone interested in tracing the origins of the Gothic novel as a form, or looking to begin their reading it’s an extremely worthwhile text. Also, it’s a perfect emergency handbag novel – I carried it around with me for months for unexpected waits and crowded commutes and it never disappointed. </div>
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<i>Lauren Nixon is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield specialising in masculinity in the Gothic, and she is also co-organiser of Sheffield Gothic and the Reimagining the Gothic project. As Sheffield Gothic's own 'renegade Austen scholar', she only brings up Jane Austen when it is absolutely relevant, which is apparently three to four times a day. </i></div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-46041507098188023252018-11-02T11:00:00.000+00:002018-11-02T11:00:08.387+00:00Frankenstein Alive, Alive: The Immortal Being<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a guest post written by Alan D. D. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Mary
Shelley’s story of a mad scientist and his creation has left an undeniable
print in popular culture. Not in vain, the story has been described as ‘one of
the most adaptable and adapted novels of all time, spurring countless
renditions in film, television, comic books, cartoons, and other products of
popular culture.’ (Braid, 2017, p. 232). </span>One
of the most praised works is the comic series <i>Frankenstein Alive, Alive</i>. Ironically, ‘the least known works of
Frankensteiniana appear to be examples of the comics medium’ (Torregrossa,
2018, p. 1), but ‘<i>Frankenstein</i>-inspired comics may also be the most numerous
adaptations of the novel’ (Torregrossa, 2018, p. 2.)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(<i>Frankenstein Alive, Alive</i>)</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
comic, written by Steve Niles and with art of Bernie Wrightson and Kelley
Jones, offers a pretty accurate summary of the original story, which was enough
for me to fall in love with it. Although it would be pretty easy to ignore it,
the comic goes along with the rules of the myth and remains loyal to them,
but this doesn’t mean the series has nothing new to offer. You don’t
always find a respectful, yet original, sequel as this one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Frankenstein Alive, </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Alive
</i>takes place after the events in the original tale. The Being attempts suicide
several times to end his suffering, and he apparently succeeds, before he is
awakened once again by a man who seems to be more benevolent than his creator, Victor Frankenstein:
Dr. Simon Ingles, who has thoughts similar to Victor’s. Ingles also tries to
control the limits between life and death, but for different reasons. </span>While
Victor was obsessed, driven by vanity, in creating a new species using
dead bodies, Ingles genuinely tries to save a life, although he does considers
murder as a way to ensure his success. If forced to decide between the two of
them, I would consider Victor to be the most ethical, for he is honest
before and after accomplishing his goal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">The narrative is pretty fluent and respects the original style of the novel, but due to Wrightson’s death, the last issue had to be completed by Jones,
presenting a lot of light in the images and curved lines that contrast a lot
with Wrightson’s art. </span>The
story, on the other hand and as I said before, follows closely Mary Shelley’s
ideas and narrative, with a couple of modern dialogues I suspect were not
corrected. However, the comic does an incredible job both capturing the
emotion, the feelings of the story and the actual events in it. The Being’s
inner and outside worlds are captured in his narration. This is mostly done by
Wrightson’s use of dark colors, several somber scenarios and lack of light. He
describes in graphics what Shelley did with words 200 years ago.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
Being created by Victor keeps his self-conscious character and tells his story
in his own words, assuring that ‘my very appearance in any town or village
provoked such agitation, fear and hostility that I was quickly run out of town.
I had done nothing. Their fear was based solely on my appearance.’ (Niles,
2018, p. 14). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of this, he ‘is
forced into alienation in order to survive, and becomes the savage that mankind
believes it is.’ (Brännström, 2006, p. 23) He also remains as a martyr, thinking
that: ‘I seemed invulnerable, but it made the pain no less.’ (Niles, 2018, p.
14).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwpYVVxgmd24pZAH5yNeKRg2nJOjbuRdzMcJ1xp_dBncWd-PbMsO4jmv2PlleRSCFh8wyYyK70f-Jize_496lTNWYAdUOZWTEP0JTJDCS1w_3w0O7etjLntAj_APKW0kXK3TOHYU2ZmUvH/s1600/frankensteinalivealive01-preview-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="980" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwpYVVxgmd24pZAH5yNeKRg2nJOjbuRdzMcJ1xp_dBncWd-PbMsO4jmv2PlleRSCFh8wyYyK70f-Jize_496lTNWYAdUOZWTEP0JTJDCS1w_3w0O7etjLntAj_APKW0kXK3TOHYU2ZmUvH/s400/frankensteinalivealive01-preview-6.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Panel from <i>Frankenstein Alive, Alive</i>)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><br />Morals
play an important role on the comic, in which The Being reasons: ‘Who was I to
point and cry “murderer”?’ (Niles, 2018, p. 8). Although he is often perceived
as a monster, it seems like that, with the correct education he received after
the events in the novel, The Being is even more conscious of humanity, life and
death. Does this mean that to be a monster is the same as being an ignorant? A
question open to debate.</span>This
matter is taken seriously even at the beginning of the series, when The Being
says that ‘I am never what they expect... So I have also learned it is always
best to give them what they expect. Give them what they want. A monster.’
(Niles, 2018, p. 6-7). This he says when he appears in front of a crowd who
wants to see “The Frankenstein Monster” and is disappointed: The expected an
angry, blood-thirsty creature, not a peaceful one, and so think they have been
fooled.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
last issue ends with a powerful reflection, and that could support the idea
that ‘monster’ and ‘ignorant’ are the same thing: ‘Even if not a man, I am
still alive... and any creature of this world, whether born by science or
sorcery, deserves to live.’ (Niles, 2018, p. 20). Seems like The Being and I
agree in something.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>References:</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Braid,
B., 2017, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Frankenstein Meme: Penny
Dreadful and The Frankenstein Chronicles as Adaptations</i>, Open Cultural
Studies 2017; 1: 232–243<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brännström, C. (2006).
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Analysis of the Theme of Alienation in
Mary Shelley’s </i>Frankenstein. Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Niles,
S. (2018) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein Alive, Alive Trio.</i>
IDW Publishing, San Diego, United States of America.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Niles,
S. (2018) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein Alive, Alive.
Issue #4</i>. IDW Publishing, San Diego, United States of America.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Torregrossa,
M. A., 2018, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein in the Comics:
A Neglected Tradition</i>, 49th NeMLA Annual Convention, 14 April 2018,
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Bio</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Alan D.D. is an
author, blogger and journalist who has been freaking the world since 1995.
Hailing and writing out of Venezuela, Alan D.D. has worked with books, comics,
music, movies and almost anything else that catches his attention. 99% of the
time, it’s something about witches. He’s currently publishing a dark fantasy
saga in Wattpad and searching for a 24/7 chocolate supplier.</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-31701500307853911322018-10-03T11:31:00.000+01:002018-10-03T11:31:33.187+01:00Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Genesis of an outcast<i>This is a guest post written by Alan D. D.</i><br />
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<br />
As ironic as it sounds, this has been pretty festive year for Goths. 1818 was not only the year when <i>Northanger Abbey</i> and <i>Persuasion</i>, by Jane Austen, were published after her death in 1817, it also started with the publication of Mary Shelley’s most famous work: <i>Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus</i>.<br />
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The novel describes the life of brilliant scientist Victor Frankenstein, who gets obsessed with the idea of creating life:<br />
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Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. (Shelley, 2016, p. 26).</blockquote>
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Using parts from corpses, he manages to accomplish this, only to say that this creature ‘was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.’ (Shelley, 2016, p. 28). Victor then attempts to correct his actions, first, shunning the creature, turning him into a murderer, and then trying to kill him. As if to wipe himself clean, he tells his story to Robert Walton, a seafarer he encounters, before dying.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victor (Colin Clive) and his creation (Boris Karloff) meet (<i>Frankenstein, </i>1931) </td></tr>
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I am not fond of Shelley’s book due to the amount of descriptions she includes, mostly those of the surroundings. However, the print she has left is undeniable, and while I didn’t enjoyed the original work as I expected because of personal likes, I do love the large amount of those derived from it, be it comic books, movies, TV series, and everything else. The Frankenstein Monster, or The Being, to respect the novel’s terminology, remains as appealing as it was 200 years ago, and I think I understand why.<br />
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Shelley describes how a pure, innocent creature that comes to life, knowing nothing about good or evil, could become a danger to society because of society’s perceptions and actions. There is a passage that explains it quite explicitly:<br />
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I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder, if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man, when he contemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse the hour of your birth. (Shelley, 2016, p. 79).</blockquote>
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According to The Being, he is no monster, for he ‘had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn’ (Shelley, 2016, p. 92). We should see him as a victim of the circumstances, for he was not born a monster:<br />
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A lack of love in the monster’s life predetermines him to become evil: he was born as “Adam” and turned into “Satan”. Since he was abandoned early after his birth, he experiences hate and prejudice, which influences his bad behavior (Sic.) and negative attitude towards people. (Skalošová, 2015, p. 55)</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeVzz_OC-Ht3e6yDW8F8TYTFoJIRxgVrAT3bHXHSq1pR2WxdgQPcr-mBCoUnZl0xG-6JJaJoEp0jgEKD9fI8Z2Adz7oZ6imxwCvT_f-lE2OCkEWzSNp9KBbqt3oBUft67AZnuf-pYM1nZ/s1600/Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1033" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeVzz_OC-Ht3e6yDW8F8TYTFoJIRxgVrAT3bHXHSq1pR2WxdgQPcr-mBCoUnZl0xG-6JJaJoEp0jgEKD9fI8Z2Adz7oZ6imxwCvT_f-lE2OCkEWzSNp9KBbqt3oBUft67AZnuf-pYM1nZ/s400/Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1831 Frontispiece </td></tr>
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Moreover, ‘he is never allowed to speak because he is met with fear, disgust and expectations of an evil mind’ (Knudsen, 2012, p. 44). This is what turns The Being into a violent, dangerous creature, because an ‘authentic dialogue rests on the mutual recognition of the participants’ (Hughes, 2017, p. 18), whereas ‘the traditional view of monsters is that they should be seen but not heard’ (Brännström, 2006, p. 12).<br />
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The most prominent example in this case is Victor’s behavior: although he accepts he created The Being, he also rejects and shames doing it, and never recognizes him as a life worthy creature. However, it is curious that, while he decides to kill The Being, this, in turn, ‘kills everybody <i>around </i>Victor because he cannot kill his creator’ (Knudsen, 2012, p. 28).<br />
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Because of that, I’m inclined to consider him nobler than Victor. In the middle of his misery, The Being seems to still thank Victor for creating him, only hoping things could have been different between them. He loathes his actions as well, lamenting: ‘Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me’ (Shelley, 2016, p. 121). He later asks Walton ‘think ye that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears?’ (ib.) which reinforces the fact that he detests his violent actions.<br />
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Keeping this in mind, viewing him and Victor Frankenstein as opposites, the second one fits the description of what a monster is according to The Being, a sentiment I think I understand. How often do we find or live a situation in which society creates a monster? How many times have we felt outcasts in the environment we live in? We all have felt deceived at least once, and sometimes this is caused by the person we thought would never harm us, making us discover a hatred we thought inconceivable. We all have been <i>The Being</i>.<br />
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The novel shows ‘how society alienates people because of their certain characteristics which usually do not fulfil the desired and decisive taste of the society’ (Sarkar, 2013, p. 29), which, as Shelley showed, is a harmful process that creates an actual monster. This makes me wonder: if we look at the news and our modern world, could we say that we have changed? Or could it be that some of us are still Beings in a Victor-ish society?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4kIEHMruWaSpBZQpGdTUFRzAKHv0krE_rRlMUeCQPNstUSRHHcFjDcHZF2pZn2ArVGpbXQeR4UTGVpkKnS5VkZn1LnmRtJSqi68BzrqiosRCFSnwexUlqg7rI8a6jS0aRP_1PXRmrzUe1/s1600/ntgds_ntlive_bb_frankenstein_digilistings_1200x650.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="960" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4kIEHMruWaSpBZQpGdTUFRzAKHv0krE_rRlMUeCQPNstUSRHHcFjDcHZF2pZn2ArVGpbXQeR4UTGVpkKnS5VkZn1LnmRtJSqi68BzrqiosRCFSnwexUlqg7rI8a6jS0aRP_1PXRmrzUe1/s640/ntgds_ntlive_bb_frankenstein_digilistings_1200x650.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Danny Boyle's <i>Frankenstein</i> (2011) featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller</td></tr>
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<b>References:</b><br />
<br />
Brännström, C. (2006). An Analysis of the Theme of Alienation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.<br />
Hughes, B. (2017) ‘A devout but nearly silent listener’: dialogue, sociability, and Promethean individualism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 16 (Autumn 2017). 4-21.<br />
Knudsen, L. O. (2012). Reading Between the Lines: An analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, using Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto as an example of male discourse about women. Master’s Thesis. Aalborg Universitet, Denmark.<br />
Sarkar, P. (2013) Frankenstein: An Echo of Social Alienation and Social Madness. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 9, Issue 3 (Mar. - Apr. 2013). 29-32.<br />
Shelley, M. W. (2016). Frankenstein. Gothic Digital Series. British Gothic Novels (1764 - 1820). Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil.<br />
Skalošová, Ž. (2015). Monster and Monstrosity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Diploma Thesis. Masaryk University, Czech Republic.<br />
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<i>Alan D.D. is an author, blogger and journalist who has been freaking the world since 1995. Hailing and writing out of Venezuela, Alan D.D. has worked with books, comics, music, movies and almost anything else that catches his attention. 99% of the time, it’s something about witches. He’s currently publishing a dark fantasy saga in Wattpad and searching for a 24/7 chocolate supplier.</i></div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-30609461303852358392018-09-05T14:00:00.000+01:002018-09-05T15:38:54.368+01:00Reimagining the Gothic 2018<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Reimagining the Gothic 2018:</b></span></div>
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Aesthetics and Archetypes</b></span></div>
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Friday 26th - Sunday 28th October</span></b></div>
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Sheffield
Gothic is pleased to announce the draft schedule for our upcoming
conference 'Reimagining the Gothic: Aesthetics and Archetypes.' Taking a
break from its traditional May slot, this year's Reimagining will be a
one off Halloween special taking place from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th
October. This event is also our first three day event and will be
entirely devoted to reimagining, rethinking, and reconsidering Gothic
Aesthetics and Archetypes - and we want you to join us! As always,
Reimagining is open to all levels of study, including undergraduates, MA
students, PGRs, ECRs, and independent scholars. </div>
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You can find the draft schedule <a href="https://drive.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/file/d/13BFwXnKPU4dL40Mqw_P__QXMJbwRyNUm/view?usp=sharing">here</a>. </div>
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Not
only do we have schedule filled with brilliant papers exploring this
year's theme, we are very excited to welcome our two keynotes, Professor
Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University) and Kieron Gillen (Comics
writer). On Saturday evening we will also be hosting our Creative
Showcase: displaying lots of great artwork and creative projects. At the
Creative Showcase, we will announce the winners of our Creative
Competition (the deadline for our Creative Competition closes on Monday
17th September, and you can find more details <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/07/announcement-reimagining-gothic.html">here</a>).<br />
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To register for the conference follow this <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reimagining-the-gothic-aesthetics-and-archetypes-tickets-49182125060">link</a> (there are two seperate ticket types for speakers and for delegates). The Creative Showcase will take place on Saturday 17th October 7-9 pm and will be free and open to the public: if you just wish to attend the Creative Showcase you will not need to register for the conference, and a seperate eventbrite will be created nearer the time. A full FAQ can be found <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LAGYbVxAviP7JAL_2PhPHJ68KExoX7mm">here</a>, but if you have any extra questions do email Sheffield Gothic at <a href="mailto:reimagininggoth15@gmail.com">reimagininggoth15@gmail.com</a>.<br />
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Finally, although not part of the Reimagining schedule we would like to draw your attention to this year's Halloween special <a href="https://twitter.com/UniShefSIIBS">SIIBS</a> seminar that is part of SIIBS's <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/siibs/seminarsevents">Autumn seminar programme,</a> where our co-organiser Mary Going will be speaking about 'Cain, Shylock, and the Blood Libel: Exploring the Vampire's Jewish Origins.' Taking place on Monday 29th October at the University of Sheffield from 3-4.30 pm, our Reimagining delegates are welcome to attend this talk. <br />
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Reimagining the Gothic: Aesthetics and Archetypes is generously sponsored by the AHPGR Forum at the University of Sheffield. </div>
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To keep up with the latest Reimagining the Gothic updates follow us at: <a href="https://twitter.com/SheffieldGothic">@SheffieldGothic</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/TheReimagining">@TheReimagining </a></div>
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<span class="hash">#</span>GothsAssemble</div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-61699315036097503872018-08-30T11:00:00.000+01:002018-08-30T11:00:04.299+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Lauren Nixon<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Sheffield Gothic's final instalment in our profile blog series features our co-organiser, Lauren Nixon, PhD student at the University of Sheffield. Read on as she explores her interest in the Gothic, her favourite Gothic texts, and who she would invite to dinner!</i></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjPG-C4yaMZKNE39BMPqnDSk0pf4wHDd5d7oonWxlJmDh1gBmohFv12IrpXDqAEMeMqKOedeXLUyvw6jkmRyblAbrxGTpLV1_n15lDy3HlRIXFvdu15wtV93IxTonqamMPw-c-Fr0NH8l/s1600/Lauren+selfi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjPG-C4yaMZKNE39BMPqnDSk0pf4wHDd5d7oonWxlJmDh1gBmohFv12IrpXDqAEMeMqKOedeXLUyvw6jkmRyblAbrxGTpLV1_n15lDy3HlRIXFvdu15wtV93IxTonqamMPw-c-Fr0NH8l/s320/Lauren+selfi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Introduction:</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hi! I’m Lauren Nixon, a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield. Those of you familiar with this blog and the general goings on at Sheffield Gothic might already know me: I’ve been co-organiser of Sheffield Gothic since 2014, subsequently the Reimagining the Gothic project and, our recent endeavour, Gaming the Gothic. I did my undergraduate at Bath Spa University and came to Sheffield to begin my PhD part-time in 2013, though I’m based in my home town of Nottingham. You can find me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/literaryla">@literaryla</a>.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What do you research?</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My thesis research focuses on the way in which Gothic novels between 1764 and 1826 represented masculinity and national identity in the figure of the soldier. My thesis, ‘Conflicting Masculinities: the figure of the soldier in Gothic fiction, 1764 – 1826’, explores the way in which the soldiers’ identity in Britain shifted and changed from the period following the Seven Years War, through the American Revolutionary War and into the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of gender, and the way in which social perception of gender is affected and altered by national identity, but my original research was far more focused on women in the Gothic. About a year into my PhD, I mentioned to my supervisors (Profs. Angela Wright and Andrew Smith, whose profile blogs you can find <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/06/sheffield-gothic-profile-blogs-angela.html">here</a> and <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/06/sheffield-gothic-profile-blog-andrew.html">here</a>) that I thought it was interesting how often the heroes of the early Gothic novels were knights, chevaliers and soldiers. I kept returning to the idea, and eventually Angela and Andy suggested that I make it my focus. My thesis looks particularly at the works of Ann Radcliffe, but also the ‘Northanger Novel’s’ and, of course, Jane Austen as well as Mary Shelley’s <i>Valperga</i> and <i>The Last Man</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />My interest in gender and the Gothic stretches well beyond the long eighteenth century, however, and recently I’ve worked on the representation of the soldier and trauma in contemporary texts such as <i>True Blood</i> and <i>Captain America: The Winter Soldier.</i><br /> </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZhoIGtMS4NPDZOoDjCPqU6aoD0HJbgUcu-8JIDImvRTQPzg_7PpeuVlQ3kayHSP_-mnvRpW4hNxWeSsKRFYiGAAJ8y91U1VWfz7LnXEXNCvRB3ZVt6YBMv5_rlhyphenhyphenown_Gue29mfaiL1qc/s1600/northanger+abbey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZhoIGtMS4NPDZOoDjCPqU6aoD0HJbgUcu-8JIDImvRTQPzg_7PpeuVlQ3kayHSP_-mnvRpW4hNxWeSsKRFYiGAAJ8y91U1VWfz7LnXEXNCvRB3ZVt6YBMv5_rlhyphenhyphenown_Gue29mfaiL1qc/s320/northanger+abbey.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(<i>Northanger Abbey</i>)<br /><i></i></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How did you become interested in the Gothic?</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyone who has followed the Sheffield Gothic blog for some time is probably well aware that I am a notoriously easy scare: my poor nerves can’t handle even the slightest jump scare, and I’ve never been much one for Horror. In fact, when I first came to the Gothic as undergraduate I was pretty certain I didn’t like it: I only took the module because it had my beloved <i>Northanger Abbey</i> on the reading list. But it was there that I discovered not only my love for the Gothic (even if I did think <i>The Mysteries of Udolpho</i> was boring the first time I read it…) but that, really, I’d always been in love with the it. I just didn’t really know what the Gothic actually <i>was</i>. As a kid, I was obsessed with myths, legends and fairytales (shout out to my local library for helping me find and read any and every text that related to King Arthur one particularly drizzly six weeks holiday) as well as texts like Phillip Pullman’s <i>His Dark Materials</i> and the Sally Lockheart series, Tove Janssons’s <i>The Moomins</i> and all things <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>. Once I began studying the Gothic, looking at everything from Le Fanu’s <i>Carmilla</i> to <i>Blade Runner</i>, I couldn’t stop – after all, the answer to ‘but is it Gothic?’ is always yes. <br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b> </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Mervyn Peake)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, the downside of going last is that my fellow Sheffield Goth’s have stolen away the best recommendations. However, there are few texts that are very close to my heart! <br /><br /><b>The <i>Gormenghast</i> series - Mervyn Peake</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">I absolutely adore these books: if I could only read one series for the rest of my life, it would be <i>Gormenghast.</i> (‘Yes, we know, you talk about it constantly!’ I hear you cry.) It’s hard to describe <i>Gormenghast</i> succinctly – the first time I read it, I had to constantly reread pages because I couldn’t quite work out what was happening. But in a good way, promise. Peake’s prose is so enchanting and unique: the way he paints both scenes and characters is easy to loose yourself in, and his exploration of the ways in which place, legacy and ritual shapes identity was part of what drew me to academia. </span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>Over the Garden Wall</i> – Cartoon Network, 2014</b></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Okay, yes, I know: I’ve also talked about this one before. But <i>Over the Garden Wall</i> is a must watch for anyone interested in Gothic storytelling. This ten part animation tells the story of Greg and Wirt, two brothers who find themselves lost in a strange place called The Unknown. The series draws on a number of American Gothic motifs and conventions, playing with what the viewer expects to create a story that is both entertaining and unsettling. Each episode is only around ten minutes long, which makes it a perfect binge watch for an Autumn evening. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>The Romance of the Forest</i> – Ann Radcliffe</b></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I couldn’t not recommend a Radcliffe novel, could I? It was a hard choice between <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i> and <i>The Romance of the Forest¸</i> but ultimately it’s Radcliffe’s third text that really won me to her. Though not as complex or as masterfully written as her later works, for me <i>The Romance of the Forest</i> is everything you could want from a Gothic romance: suspense, mystery, adventure and more. Also, I was a big fan of Disney’s <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> as a child and I am convinced someone working on that film must have read this novel. The scene where Aurora and Philip meet and dance to ‘Once Upon a Dream’ is almost identical to the first meeting of Adeline and Theodore. Including the friendly woodland creatures. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><b><i>Dragon Age</i> – Bioware</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I was <span style="font-family: inherit;">hesitant to recommend this video game series, not because I don’t think its Gothic but because playing them nearly ruined my PhD. The first in the series, <i>Dragon Age: Origins</i> captured my attention almost straight away with its <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> inspired levelling system and in-depth worldbuilding. All three game employ Gothic aesthetics and conventions, but the second in the series (<i>Dragon Age 2</i>) for me was particularly consciously Gothic. I spoke briefly at this year’s IGA conference about the way in which the play experience is used in the series to convey and create emotional responses. Each game you play as a new hero, but your choices and decisions in the previous game directly affect the state of the world in the next.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Buzzfeed Unsolved</b> </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(<i>Buzzfeed Unsolved</i>)<br /><i></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m someone who consumes media constantly, and on a large scale. The dawn of platforms like Twitch (my beloved DnD livestream show <i>Critical Role</i> nearly made it to this list, and though I do highly recommend it for anyone interested in joint storytelling or fantasy gaming, it is a lot of hours of content) and Youtube have brought some wonderful shows to life. <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKijjvu6bN1c-ZHVwR7-5WA">Buzzfeed Unsolved</a></i>, which is now in its fourth season, is a must watch for anyone who enjoys mystery and the unexplained. The show is split into two: True Crime and Supernatural. Each week hosts, Ryan Bergara (who does believe in the supernatural) and Shane Madej (who most certainly does not) either discuss an unsolved mystery or visit a location that is supposedly haunted. It’s a fun and informative show, whether you believe or not (#Shaniac). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Gaslight</i> (1944)</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Each year when we decide the schedule for our reading group, we try to include a variety of mediums – which, as someone who can’t handle a scare, can be difficult sometimes when it comes to film. However <i>Gaslight</i> has always been at the top of my must see list when it comes to Gothic cinema: based on the play by Peter Hamilton and starring Ingrid Bergman, this film is truly a masterpiece in Gothic storytelling. The pacing, the score and the superb acting all create undeniable tension and sense of dread in the viewer that, for me, few films have ever achieved. <br /><br />There are certainly more texts that I could recommend (I chose not to mention Austen’s <i>Northanger Abbey</i>, because everyone knows I love that book), but these are certainly the ones that I am fondest of. Lately I’ve been interested in the way in which pop culture uses Gothic aesthetics to frame masculinity, and what it is that makes it so appealing to a young female audience. I’ll be discussing the Marvel Universe’s beloved trickster Loki, but also the music videos of the hugely popular Korean boy band EXO. For a taster, check out the video to their 2016 single ‘Monster’:</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you could invite any Gothic writer, artist, musician or character to dinner, who would you choose and why?</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shocking I’m sure no one, I’d invite Jane Austen and Ann Radcliffe: to listen to them discuss books would be a dream come true. Plus that made up meeting in <i>Becoming Jane</i> did them both a huge disservice – I refuse to accept a meeting between the two would have been that dull. I’d invite Mervyn Peake and his wife Maeve, just to listen to their stories and peharps Sheridan Le Fanu, so we can have a frank conversation about how disturbing (but excellent) his short story <i>Green Tea</i> is. </span></span></div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-57223622334792216882018-08-23T11:00:00.000+01:002018-08-23T11:00:05.087+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Mary Going<br />
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<i>Sheffield Gothic's penultimate instalment in our series of profile blogs features our co-organiser, Mary Going, PhD student at the University of Sheffield. Read on to explore what drew Mary to the Gothic, her favourite Gothic texts, and who she would invite to dinner. </i></div>
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<b>Introduction:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Hi,
I’m Mary Going and I’m a PhD candidate in the School of English at the
University of Sheffield. An interloper from ‘down South,’ I first came to
Sheffield to complete my undergraduate degree in English Literature, and
somehow ended up staying on to study my Master’s degree in Nineteenth Century
Literature, before starting my PhD which I am currently doing part-time. You
can find me on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/MazGoing">@MazGoing</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>What
do you research?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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I
have always been bewitched by the Gothic, but I am also fascinated with the
portrayal of religion in fiction; from religious spaces, aesthetics, and identities
to religious and biblical narratives, myths, and stories that are woven into so
many texts. My current research explores the depiction of Jewish characters in
late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century fiction, with a particular focus
on Gothic texts. I am especially interested in the development of the Wandering
Jew myth, the character of Shylock, and the vampire during this period, as well
as the representation of familial relationships and Jewish identity. More
broadly, I am interested in the depiction of religion as it appears in Gothic and
Horror of any period, and particularly anything that lets me research vampires. I also founded the <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/siibs/sresearch/gothic-bible-project">Gothic Bible project</a> with Katie Edwards, Caroline Blyth, and Christopher Scott. Along with curating a <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html">dedicated blog series</a> and organising talks and special reading groups, this project hosted its inaugural conference last year on Halloween. You can keep up to date by following the project on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/GothicBible">@GothicBible</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>How
did you become interested in the Gothic?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Looking
back, it seems that I’ve always been drawn to texts that have darker, Gothic
flavours. I can remember, as a child, being terrified but also entirely
captivated by Josephine Lee’s <i>Joy is Not Herself </i>(1962), a children’s
novel that tells the story of Melisande Joy Montgomery. Melisande is a witch,
and following her increasingly ominous and evil behaviour (which includes causing
a near fatal accident in which her neighbour Eleanor is thrown from a horse)
Melisande is exorcised, and with evil expelled ‘Melisande’ becomes Joy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuPh5Njh7Ubcg5J2wOvjTqPEn64UoDQO0O3lMdquBZszPMvyzDACzcoyy04qayn8h6N72uQqGSgm0TjfGEvGLxWDwXxIKNZ4CIpvoM_YjNGux5fThdbzkRv0mKWkEoRyC01t2aERwvb14/s1600/244572.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="284" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuPh5Njh7Ubcg5J2wOvjTqPEn64UoDQO0O3lMdquBZszPMvyzDACzcoyy04qayn8h6N72uQqGSgm0TjfGEvGLxWDwXxIKNZ4CIpvoM_YjNGux5fThdbzkRv0mKWkEoRyC01t2aERwvb14/s320/244572.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover for <i>Charmed Life</i></td></tr>
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Keeping
with the Witch theme, I loved Jill Murphy’s <i>Worst Witch</i> series (who didn’t!) and while I was at primary school, I dressed up as Hermione Granger for World Book day; although, frankly, the less said about my childhood obsession with the <i>Harry Potter</i> series the better. Another childhood favourite was Dianna Wynn Jones’ brilliant <i>Chrestomanci</i>
series, set in a world parallel to ours where ‘magic is as common as music is
with us’ and focusing on the eponymous Chrestomanci, an enchanter and
government official. I especially enjoyed C<i>harmed Life</i> (1977), the
first in the series and which introduces Christopher ‘Cat’ Chant and the
Chrestomanci title (they are enchanters with nine lives) and <i>Witch Week </i>(1982)
which is set in another parallel world, this time one without magic, drawing on the
story of Guy Fawkes and featuring the adult Cat Chant as Chrestomanci. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Later,
I was captivated by Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> and Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>,
both of which have stayed with me as two of my all-time favourites. During my
undergrad I sought out as much Gothic that I could. I took Angela Wright and
Helena Ifill’s fabulous second year module on the Gothic; got involved with the
‘Gothic Bites’ project (organised by Angela, Helena, and Kate Gadsby-Mace); and
on hearing about the launch of a new Gothic reading group, I knew I had to
attend. After the first meeting discussing Dominik Moll's <i>Le Moine</i> or <i>The Monk</i>
(2011), I haven’t looked back.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>What
Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend
and why?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Ok,
if you haven’t read <i>Frankenstein </i>or <i>Dracula </i>yet, then what have
you been doing? These are perhaps really obvious choices, but no matter how
many other books I read, I always end up coming back to these two, and the legacies of Shelley’s Creature and Stoker’s Count are still very apparent today. You can read
more of my thoughts on <i>Frankenstein</i>, including why Danny Boyle’s 2011
stage adaptation is the best adaptation, <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/03/sheffield-gothic-does-world-book-day_2.html">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover for Paul Féval's <i>Vampire City</i></td></tr>
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For
any fans of vampire fiction, I would definitely recommend Florence Marryat’s <i>The
Blood of the Vampire </i>(which I have previously written about <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2016/11/1897-year-of-psychic-vampire-florence.html">here</a>)<i>. </i>Published
in the same year as <i>Dracula</i>, this novel tells the story of Harriet
Brandt, an orphan who also happens to be a psychic vampire. Marryat’s vampire
is a perfect contrast to Stoker’s Dracula: Harriet traces her ancestry not to Transylvania
but to Jamaica, and, rather than draining the blood of her victims, she drains
their life force. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another
unique but fabulous vampire novel is Paul Féval’s 1867 <i>La Ville Vampire</i>
or <i>Vampire City </i>(translated by Brian Stableford). The vampires in this
novel are simple amazing, and I could not do them justice at all here so you
will just have to read it for yourself (although I will mention that they may <i>glow
in the dark!</i>). However, the premise of the novel should be enough to hook
any good Gothicist: the narrative begins with Ann Radcliffe (yes, <i>that</i>
Ann Radcliffe) as she runs away with a band of vampire hunters on her wedding
day to rescue her friends from the vampire lord Otto Goetzi. Yes, you read that
right – this novel is essentially Ann Radcliffe fan fiction meets <i>Buffy the
Vampire Slayer</i>, or, in other words, Ann Radcliffe the Vampire Slayer.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking
of <i>Buffy</i>, you may have noticed that I’m a bit obsessed with this show…enough
to curate a dedicated <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/p/sheffield-gothics-buffy-blog-series.html">Buffy the Vampire Slayer blog series</a> in honour of the
show’s twentieth anniversary in 2017. Although there are definitely
conversations to be had about some aspects of the show which haven’t aged well
(for example: Xander; the show’s portrayal of rape and rape culture; and of
course, its creator), I still think <i>Buffy</i> is important in its premise:
to empower the girl who, in Horror narratives, is typically killed off. Rather
than being killed, or needing to be rescued, Buffy (and the Scoobies) fights
back, and the show has never lost its cult status or appeal. With the recent
announcement of a <i>Buffy </i>reboot (or is that a sequel?) along with reboots
of <i>Charmed</i> and <i>Sabrina the Teenage Witch</i> coming soon as well, it’s
clear that there is still a desire for female-fronted shows like <i>Buffy</i> –
and what better time to watch (or re-watch) the original?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There
are so many vampire texts that I could recommend, so I’ll finish with my
favourite vampire film: Jason Krawczyk’s 2015 Horror-comedy, <i>He Never Died</i>.
This is also a must-watch for any Henry Rollins fans, who portrays Jack, or
rather, Cain (‘I’m in the Bible’), a weary vampire who has been wandering
and murdering for centuries whilst being unable to die himself. Expect a lot of
blood, but also a lot of humour.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQY_nN4ePwUf8gC7NiL5qoqcEpp8Wxror6-_SeoDSdHLmWsmv__uiB2Z5cJO0fFU5lrvptjdMm6B8SdAyupcqTh3qY4rtd3oD2U7tt5QzOEwb4l36XTC_YdIvW_KWl9NupA24U93yA3xTe/s1600/tumblr_o3167yvWh91urdwd4o1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="499" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQY_nN4ePwUf8gC7NiL5qoqcEpp8Wxror6-_SeoDSdHLmWsmv__uiB2Z5cJO0fFU5lrvptjdMm6B8SdAyupcqTh3qY4rtd3oD2U7tt5QzOEwb4l36XTC_YdIvW_KWl9NupA24U93yA3xTe/s400/tumblr_o3167yvWh91urdwd4o1_500.gif" width="400" /></a>I also really love Phillip Pullman's <i>His Dark Materials </i>series:<i> </i>a beautiful trilogy that is, in part, a retelling of John Milton's <i>Paradise Lost </i>(whic you should also read, if only for its fantastic depiction of Satan and Hell) and the biblical story of Adam and Eve<i>. </i>This series follows young adults Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry as they journey through various parallel universes; and in one of these worlds, Lyra's, every human is paired with their own daemon. Another YA series that I would recommend is Cassandra Clare's <i>Mortal Instruments</i> series which tells the story of a group of young nephilim or shadowhunters - Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Alec - who protect the world of 'mundanes' from demons, and who draw their powers from marking, or scarring, their bodies with specific marks. Of course, one of my favourite characters in this series is Clary's best friend, Simon, who is not a shadowhunter, but an ordinary, 'mundane,' Jewish teenager who somewho becomes a vampire, then a daylighter (a vampire who can walk in the Sun), and then is marked with the First Mark, or the Mark of Cain. And this makes Simon a very interesting example of a Jewish vampire!<br />
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Speaking of Cain, I have to quickly mention one of my favourite bands, Avenged Sevenfold. Taking their name from Genesis chapter four (that's the story of Cain and Abel), this heavy metal band often blends religious narratives and Gothic or Horror aethetics into their songs, while at the centre of their artwork are skulls and bats. Their song 'Chapter Four' retells the Genesis story of Cain killing his brother Abel ('<span>From the soil his blood cries out to me') and has become the unofficial soundtrack of my current research. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration from <i>The Monk</i></td></tr>
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In
terms of religious Gothic, the texts I would recommend include Matthew Lewis’s <i>The
Monk </i>(1796), Ann Radcliffe’s <i>The Italian</i> (1797), and James Hogg’s <i>Confessions
of a Justified Sinner</i> (1824). <i>The Monk</i> is a scandalous Gothic novel that
verges on being pornographic; it was debated in Parliament, and then later bowdlerized
by Lewis for being blasphemous, and features a fantastic cameo from the
Wandering Jew who bears a revised version of the mark of Cain on his forehead in
the form of a burning cross. Ann Radcliffe’s later novel functions as a
corrective to Lewis’s, but is equally as enjoyable with its own immoral monk
and type-scenes of the Inquisition. Hogg’s novel is of a different cast, and
perhaps too complicated to describe in this post (you can read more about it <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hogg-blog-private-memoirs-and.html">here</a>), but
I will just say that it may or may not feature the devil – and it’s up to you
the reader to decide.</div>
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Finally,
I have to recommend Syd Moore’s fabulous Essex Witch Museum Mysteries. I posted
a <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-only-way-is-witchcraft.html">blog </a>about Moore’s novel earlier this week, but if witches, Essex Girls, and
unapologetic feminism are your thing you should definitely read this series!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>If
you could invite any Gothic writer, artist, musician or character to dinner,
who would you choose and why?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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I
would invite Mary Shelley’s Creature and Bram Stoker’s Dracula to dinner because I think
it would be fun to show them their numerous reincarnations and hear their
thoughts on the versions of themselves. I would also invite Buffy and the
Scoobies (although maybe not Xander…) because, let’s face it, of course I
would! Not only do I think they would be excellent dinner guests, with the fabulous Giles (everyone's favourite librarian) keeping everything in check, but the gang
would be able to make sure that Dracula (Stoker’s Dracula, not the version from
‘Buffy Versus Dracula’, <i>Buffy</i> S5E01!) was well-behaved. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-23758423262652792572018-08-21T11:00:00.000+01:002018-08-21T11:00:00.767+01:00The Only Way Is Witchcraft<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live</i> (Exodus 22:18)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Blonde,
dumb, easy, sleeps around, drunk every night, is known for being a slut,
stupid, cheap, hair tight to head etc.</i> (<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Essex%20girl">Urban dictionary</a>)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>It’s
my theory that, despite memories of the witch hunts fading, the
reputation of the county’s women never really recovered, which is why,
when the Essex girl reared her flossy blonde head she was taken up so
quickly and decisively. </i>(Syd Moore, ‘<a href="https://www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2017/18/syd-moore-on-witchcraft-and-the-first-essex-girls">Were women accused of witchcraft the first Essex Girls?</a>’) </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Welcome to Witch County. Prepare to rethink everything you know about the stereotypical witch (and the stereotypical Essex girl). And remember: The Only Way Is Witchcraft. Revising the traditional ghost story, Syd Moore’s novels bring supernatural mysteries into the twenty-first century, putting the figure of the witch - and at the same time that of the Essex girl - at their heart. Moore’s novels are the perfect blend of Gothic and unapologetic feminism: and trust me, once you start reading them you won’t be able to put them down. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But first, let me explain why I am so bewitched by these novels, and I’ll start with a confession: I am an Essex girl. Although relatively new, the Essex girl stereotype has been around for a few decades - and if you're not sure what an 'Essex Girl' is, watch the above video from 1991 for a fairly accurate representation of this stereotype. Sure, I might not always sound ‘Essex’ (my mum is from London you know); I don’t wear white stiletto heels (being 5 foot, you may have noticed I do wear a lot of heels, but mainly of the black variety); and I’ve swapped the orange, baked, fake tan for a pale complexion more befitting a vampire. Also, while we’re here, no I don’t know anyone from TOWIE and no, we don’t all hang out at the Sugar Hut (FYI - Essex is a very big county). But that exactly the point - stereotypes aren’t accurate, and whether we choose to wear stilettos or not, or choose to be tanned or pasty, there is more to every Essex girl than the dumb, blonde stereotype. So, to summarise, I may not fit the stereotype, but this is what an Essex girl looks like. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Thurrock heritage sign marking <i>Dracula </i>connection)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span id="goog_1195759028"></span><span id="goog_1195759029"></span>And even though I’m up in Sheffield researching the Gothic, I haven’t left Essex behind. Vampires have cropped up in my research a few times, and, when I say vampires, that includes the Count himself. Which is perfect for me, because not only is <i>Dracula</i> one of my favourite novels, but I especially enjoy reading the parts set in <a href="https://www.thurrock.gov.uk/historical-places-in-thurrock/purfleets-dracula-connection">Purfleet, Essex</a> (for those not as obsessed with <i>Dracula</i> as I am, that’s where Dr Seward’s Lunatic Asylum and Dracula’s Carfax house are situated). I can even remember visiting a <a href="http://www.ingrays.com/gallery/purfleet-heritage-military-centre-119">local Purfleet museum</a>, and turning into a hidden corned who should I find myself face-to-face with but the infamous Count Dracula! Ok, disclaimer: it was only a coffin surrounded by <i>Dracula</i> posters, but still, it marked a pretty important piece of Essex’s Gothic heritage. And I would be lying to say that I’m not thinking of the Count every time I pass Purfleet station on my journeys to and from Essex and Sheffield. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(This image captures the importance of trains within <i>Dracula</i>) </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I never pretend that I’m from London as some of my friends have done, because I love where I’m from (although I’m also proud of my ties to London’s East End, but that’s a story for another time). And that’s why, when I walked into my local Essex book store and saw a book with a gorgeous skull on its cover, a playful tagline declaring that ‘The Only Way is Witchcraft,' and blurb that mentioned the ‘Essex Witch Museum’, I knew I had to read it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That book was <i>Strange Magic</i>, the first in Moore’s Essex Witch Museum Mysteries series where she links the historical stereotype of the Witch and the contemporary stereotype of the Essex Girl and questions the accuracy of them both: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘The Essex girl threatens because she is attractive. That’s why she’s put into, a box, a stereotype, in the first place. So she can be controlled. And disempowered.’</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Like women accused of witchcraft.’</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Also controlled. Also disempowered by their label.’</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Strange Magic, </i>2017)</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the age of the Me Too movement, and as cries of a ‘Witch Hunt’ are inauthentically uttered (here is looking at you, Trump), it is important to remember that historical Witch Hunts, and the creation and perpetuation of stereotypes such as the Witch and the Essex girl, function to control, disempower, and silence women. The Me Too movement has proved powerful in empowering women and other disempowered individuals, giving them back, to some extent, control and their own voices. And this is exactly what Moore does through all of her novels, too. Reclaiming the narratives and identities of witches throughout history and that of the recent Essex girl, Moore’s novels are, simply, bewitching. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<h3>
<u><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Drowning Pool</i> (2011)</span></span></b></u></h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Moore’s debut novel tells the story of Sarah Grey, a widow relocating to Leigh-on-Sea with her son Alfie after the death of her husband; expecting to rebuild her life, Sarah and Alfie are soon targeted by several hauntings, including eerie encounters with ‘the burning girl.’ The novel begins with a drunken séance, after which the hauntings begin. Sarah is especially targeted by a ghost who turns out to be her namesake, delving into local Essex legends that mark the nineteenth century Sarah Grey as a witch and therefore evil incarnate. This story is a great introduction to Moore’s expert juxtaposition of the historical witch stereotype and contemporary stereotypes of women, and especially the Essex girl stereotype. It also beautifully ties the fictional ghost of Sarah Grey to local Essex histories as Moore’s witch is based on the legends of Sarah Moore, Leigh’s very own sea-witch.</span></span><br />
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<u><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Witch Hunt </i>(2012)</span></span></b></u></h3>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Delving deeper into the myths and legend of witches, Moore’s second novel explores the infamous Witch-Finder General, Matthew Hopkins, as well as drawing inspiration from the legends of his female victims accused of witchcraft such as Rebecca West. The novel’s protagonist, journalist Sadie Asquith, emulates Moore in her desire to research historical witches, acknowledge connections between the witch and the Essex girl stereotype, and also claim back these narratives for women. As Sadie investigates the ‘dark past of the Essex witch hunts,’ she soon experiences strange visions and hauntings. These include a very chilling episode during a visit to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/essex/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8342000/8342970.stm">Colchester castle</a> where Sadie is accidentally locked in one of its cells: yes, the very ones in which women accused of witchcraft would have been detained in during Matthew Hopkins reign. If that isn’t enough for you, Moore also weaves into her story a brilliant, though fictional, twist regarding the fate of Matthew Hopkins - which you will just have to read to find out!</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<u><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Essex Witch Museum Mysteries </span></span></b></u></h3>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#1 <i>Strange Magic</i> (2017)</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#2 </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Strange Sight</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (2017)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">#3 </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Strange Fascination</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (2018)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not only does the The Essex Witch Museum Mysteries Series have the best books covers, but they are simply fabulous stories. From the moment I read the first book, <i>Strange Magic</i>, I was hooked: the story opens with an eerie prologue detailing the demonic possession of a small boy by the ghost of a child from the era of witch hunts, and anyone who knows me will know that I find demonic possession stories terrifying (and no, I still won’t rewatch <i>The Exorcist</i>). Luckily, the book introduces its feisty protagonist, Essex girl Rosie Strange who has just inherited the Essex Witch museum from her grandfather, Septimus Strange. Skeptical about witches, ghosts and magic, and initially planning to tear down the museum (a museum that is, by the way, designed to look like a skull), Rosie ends up on a embroiled in a mysterious hunt with the museum’s curator, PhD student (who’s dissertation is on, you guessed it, witches) Sam Stone, who Rosie humorously oscillates between finding extremely irritating or attractively captivating. Teaming up, Rosie and Sam embark on a journey to find the bones of the Essex witch from St. Osyth, Ursula Cadence, in order to save the possessed boy. Along the way, Rosie is visited by the ghost of Ursula herself - or, surely not, because ghosts and witches aren’t real, are they? </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Skeleton of a witch, believed to be Ursula Cadence or Kempe, found at St Osyth, Essex)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Moore’s wit makes Rosie and Sam one of the best literary detective duos, and trust me when I say that you will want to follow their relationship and their investigations throughout this series. The second book, <i>Strange Sight</i>, introduces a paranormal lockdown situation where the pair investigate the apparent haunting of an East End restaurant (did I mention that half of my family is from the East End?) while <i>Strange Fascination</i> explores the mysteries of a centuries-old boulder in the fiction Adder’s Fork, home to the Essex Witch Museum, as it is moved by developers. The boulder is said to mark the grave of a witch and is based of the legends of Ann Hewghes who lived in the village of Great Leighs, Essex where she was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, her remains buried under the boulder. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout this series, Moore stylishly offers a commentary on the witch and Essex girl stereotypes. If you like Gothic tales of witches full of hauntings, magic, wit, and plenty of unashamed feminism, then this series is for you. And, like <i>The Drowning Pool </i>and <i>Witch Hunt</i>, Moore brilliantly ties her stories to the histories, myths, and locales of Essex while revisiting the stories of the counties many victims of historical witch hunts. </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Think you know witches? Think you know Essex girls? Think again. </span></span></b><br />
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<b><i>Mary Going is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield exploring exploring depictions of Jewish characters, myths and legends - such as Shylock, vampires, and the Wandering Jew - in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century literature. She is co co-organiser of Sheffield Gothic and the Gothic Bible project, as well as being Sheffield Gothic's current Vampire Slayer, and keeping with the Witch theme of this blog Mary recommends the </i>Buffy <i>episode 'Gingerbread' (E11 S03) as a must watch. You can also find her on twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/MazGoing">@MazGoing</a>. </i></b></div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-68111997868424226552018-08-15T10:30:00.000+01:002018-08-15T10:30:01.853+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Carly Stevenson<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Sheffield Gothic's next instalment in our series of profile blog features Carly Stevenson, PhD student at the University of Sheffield. Read on to find out what drew Carly to the Gothic, her favourite Gothic texts, and who she would invite to dinner!</i></div>
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My name is Carly Stevenson and I am a PhD student in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Prior to embarking on the PhD programme, I completed my Masters and BA (Hons) in English at the University of Lincoln. I currently work as a sessional tutor for the Worker’s Education Association (WEA) and I have been a member of Sheffield Gothic since 2013.</div>
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<b>What do you research?</b></div>
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My research examines the influence of Gothic Literature on John Keats. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which Keats’s engagement with the Gothic interacts with the language of medicine in his poetry. My first chapter explores uncanny images of severed, reanimated and dead hands in a selection of Keats’s poetry and letters. My second chapter focuses on the ‘femme fatale’ figures in Keats’s ‘vampire poems’: <i>Lamia </i>and ‘La belle dame sans merci’.</div>
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<b>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</b></div>
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To an extent, the Gothic has always been a part of my identity. Like many children, I grew up reading the fairy tales / folk stories of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm, which set me off on my trajectory towards macabre interests. During my adolescence, I devoured <i>Point Horror </i>novels and subscribed to a magazine that printed abridged versions of classic Gothic tales, before progressing to more sophisticated works, such as Stephen King’s Misery, V. C. Andrews’ <i>Flowers in the Attic</i> and Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>. In my teens, I discovered John Carpenter’s <i>Halloween </i>and Wes Craven’s <i>A Nightmare on Elm Street</i>, which cemented my love for horror cinema. Around the same time, I also went through a <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i> phase and developed a mild obsession with Tim Burton’s films. My academic interest in the Gothic began when I opted to study a Gothic module in the second year of my undergraduate degree, though a previous module on Victorian literature had already sowed the seeds. During my Masters year, I completed a module on ghost stories and wrote my dissertation on Shakespeare’s Gothic inheritance in Keats’s poetry. From there, I decided to turn my interest in Keats’s relationship with the Gothic into a PhD proposal, which brought me to Sheffield.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Ben Whishaw as Keats in the biopic <i>Bright Star</i>, dir Jane Campion)</td></tr>
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<b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b></div>
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Aside from everything I’ve already mentioned, I’d recommend <i>Wide Sargasso Sea</i> by Jean Rhys, which is a feminist and anti-colonial response to <i>Jane Eyre</i> set mostly in the West Indies. <i>Wide Sargasso Sea</i> is a great read because it addresses the darkest, unanswered questions that arise from Brontë’s novel and gives the liminal character of Antoinette ‘Bertha’ Mason a voice. The subversive centring of the ‘other’ in Rhys’ story prompts a reappraisal of Jane Eyre and its heroine, who is complicit in the imprisonment and dehumanisation of ‘the first Mrs Rochester’. Rhys is an excellent writer, whose sumptuous prose brings settings and characters vividly to life. <i>Wide Sargasso Sea</i> could be described as an example of Caribbean Gothic or Tropical Gothic, wherein the ruins and haunted castles of the European Gothic tradition are replaced with sultry forests filled with monstrous hothouse flowers. The landscape may be different, but patriarchal tyranny remains.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisVAOQbWWvRs9IM7HBAM7vtEdPhlYansetw8QqPoFtC2amUFJ3T4AuSKpC7koggkJxDt4iDdaHdC5VoOAViBsbHLxF9meJhK_yeZpn3oZbHAeNVcHIWrR7-wd8PqoVZhHYDTe3bQYtSMP3/s1600/tumblr_n230hmjYj11s3y9slo1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisVAOQbWWvRs9IM7HBAM7vtEdPhlYansetw8QqPoFtC2amUFJ3T4AuSKpC7koggkJxDt4iDdaHdC5VoOAViBsbHLxF9meJhK_yeZpn3oZbHAeNVcHIWrR7-wd8PqoVZhHYDTe3bQYtSMP3/s400/tumblr_n230hmjYj11s3y9slo1_500.gif" width="400" /></a>My film recommendation has to be Jim Jarmusch’s <i>Only Lovers Left Alive</i> because it is such a gorgeous piece of cinema, not least of all because it stars Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. Adam and Eve are a worldly, artistic vampire couple who live half the world apart from each other, in Detroit and Tangier respectively. Adam is a reclusive musician who, depressed by modern life, considers suicide, prompting Eve to take an impromptu night flight to his dilapidated, Victorian home in an attempt to restore his faith in humanity. <i>Only Lovers Left Alive</i> portrays its vampires as addicts who are dependent on local suppliers due to the fear of contamination and exposure. Adam’s source is the local blood bank, while back in Tangier, Eve gets her O negative from Christopher Marlowe – yes, <i>the </i>Christopher Marlowe - who is not only a vampire, but the unacknowledged writer of Shakespeare’s body of work. Jarmusch is clearly aware, as we all are, that the vampire-as-junkie trope has been done before, which is why he injects a healthy dose of humour into these morose dealings. When Adam visits the hospital for his fix, he sports name badges reading Dr Faustus and Dr Polidori.<i> Only Lovers Left Alive</i> is a languid, elegiac mood piece that packs in an impressive amount of literary references and has a great soundtrack to boot.</div>
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<b>If you could invite any Gothic writer, artist, musician or character to dinner, who would you choose and why?</b></div>
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This is an easy one. I’d invite everyone who attended the infamous ghost story competition at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816, plus Keats. I think Keats and Polidori would bond over their experiences in the medical profession.</div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-26805283339811425192018-07-25T12:00:00.000+01:002018-07-25T12:05:07.116+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Amy Jackson<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Next in Sheffield Gothic's series of profile blogs is post featuring Amy Jackson, PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield. Read on to find out how Amy became interested in the Gothic, what her favourite Gothic texts are, and who she would invite to dinner!</i></div>
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<b>Introduction:</b></div>
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I’m Amy Jackson and I’m a PhD student in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. I completed my BA (Hons) in English Literature at York St John University and an MA in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. </div>
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<b>What do you research?</b></div>
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I’m researching the ways in which English Renaissance literature, particularly Renaissance drama, anticipated and influenced aspects of Gothic literature.</div>
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During my MA at Sheffield I focused on various aspects of Renaissance revenge tragedies and that has continued in the first year of my PhD research. My main interests are early modern religion and the representation of death on stage but I’m also very interested in early modern witchcraft, demonology, and national identity. I usually work on Elizabethan and Jacobean plays such as Shakespeare’s <i>Titus Andronicus</i> and <i>Macbeth</i>, Christopher Marlowe’s <i>Doctor Faustus</i>, and John Webster’s <i>The Duchess of Malfi</i> but I plan to work on Caroline drama in the future.</div>
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Another aspect of my research explores how eighteenth-century writers and scholars interacted with, and often purposely misread, Shakespeare’s work to create the figure of ‘the Bard’. This is an offshoot of my main research topic but I’m intrigued by the ways in which Shakespeare’s work was ‘corrected’ in the eighteenth century and how often Shakespeare’s ghost was brought onto the stage in prologues to approve or condemn the changes made to his work. </div>
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<b>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</b></div>
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I read a lot of Gothic novels as a teenager including <i>Dracula</i>, <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, <i>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>, and <i>Wuthering Heights</i> but I can’t pinpoint when I started reading them.</div>
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I became interested in Gothic studies when I took Sheffield’s MA module ‘The Rise of the Gothic’. The module led to my current research topic as I was encouraged to explore the links between Renaissance literature and the Gothic. Through this module, I was introduced to novels such as Matthew Lewis’ <i>The Monk</i> and Charlotte Dacre’s <i>Zofloya </i>and I loved everything that I read for that module. Well, I loved everything except Jane Austen’s <i>Northanger Abbey</i> but the Sheffield Gothic reading group has changed my opinion about that novel recently. </div>
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I should also mention that my childhood home was next to the remains of a 12th-century Cluniac monastery so a lot of my childhood was spent exploring the ruins. It makes sense that I’m drawn to Gothic novels and early modern religion. </div>
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<b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b></div>
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I’d recommend anything that I’ve already mentioned (including the Renaissance plays) but I’d also recommend several other novels and a TV show.</div>
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<i>The Italian </i>by Ann Radcliffe (1797)</div>
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This is my favourite Radcliffe novel. It’s dark and sombre and it examines religious persecution during the Holy Inquisition. It lends itself perfectly to my research interests around post-Reformation religion but I also just really enjoyed reading it. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAhs4a7IlzUxK9vQKfEG0iS9O00I5c06WlDYgtt-WByt3RNVf8EZgw6NA6T_OSZEXDjL6jQhRun3H9-CT6E88rguXFP71_ybTTbp-vPw3w3L5tooNMXM8zCHYnwZSwyoZldf2KjUg1Wxyk/s1600/rebeccaisbn9780349006574.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="414" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAhs4a7IlzUxK9vQKfEG0iS9O00I5c06WlDYgtt-WByt3RNVf8EZgw6NA6T_OSZEXDjL6jQhRun3H9-CT6E88rguXFP71_ybTTbp-vPw3w3L5tooNMXM8zCHYnwZSwyoZldf2KjUg1Wxyk/s320/rebeccaisbn9780349006574.jpg" width="203" /></a><i>Frankenstein </i>by Mary Shelley (1818)</div>
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Mary Shelley’s Gothic/science fiction novel is a masterpiece and a must-read. I just love everything about it but I especially love that Shelley engaged with the scientific discourse of the time and set some of her novel in the Arctic. <i>Frankenstein </i>still resonates with readers today and Mary Shelley changed how we think about science fiction.</div>
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<i>Rebecca </i>by Daphne du Maurier (1938)</div>
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The atmosphere that Daphne du Maurier created in this novel is amazing. There are hints of violence and the supernatural but I think it’s the feeling of mystery and terror, along with the wonderful setting of Manderley, that makes this novel such a great Gothic read. </div>
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<i>The Woman in Black </i>by Susan Hill (1983) </div>
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This is a novel that is full of silent tension and vindictive ghosts. It feels like you’re reading a classic Gothic novel even though it was written in the 1980s. </div>
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My final book recommendation is a novel that terrified me when I first read it. It’s so intense and I was not prepared for the matter-of-fact discussions of violence and murder that frequently occur in the novel. I suppose <i>The Wasp Factory</i> is a horror novel but it does contain a lot of the conventions of a classic Gothic novel from the isolated, creepy setting to the constant feeling of dread that you experience while you’re reading it. It was described by a reviewer in the Irish Times as ‘a work of unparalleled depravity’ when it was first published and that’s pretty Gothic. </div>
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<i>The Living and the Dead </i>(BBC, 2016) </div>
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As for TV, I have to recommend <i>The Living and the Dead</i>. It’s a supernatural horror mini-series and it’s a very unsettling show. It’s set on a nineteenth-century farm and each episode deals with the disconnect between spiritualism and science through hauntings and possessions. It’s a wonderful series. </div>
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I would have to choose Mary Shelley because she’s one of my favourite writers. She lived a fascinating life and she was an incredibly influential writer so it would be amazing to be in the same room as her. </div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-15164636689140680592018-07-17T11:00:00.000+01:002018-07-17T11:00:05.308+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog - Ellen Bulford Welch <div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The next instalment in Sheffield Gothic's profile blog series focuses on Ellen Bulford Welch from the University of Sheffield. Read on to find out what drew Ellen to the Gothic, her favourite Gothic texts, and who she would invite to dinner!</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFtNRfG6oz-tSI9CNe49DoEOFW-iwA5Mg_RE-E_S79qoXB4MlQ8ieELwpL5OjGvnUTENAc8027AKs_SIifGdpMq_R5POOHv0MW2rkZSugsvmVr-kknsJMIAcYAAF74T_TB9RRQR5m6OB1z/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="437" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFtNRfG6oz-tSI9CNe49DoEOFW-iwA5Mg_RE-E_S79qoXB4MlQ8ieELwpL5OjGvnUTENAc8027AKs_SIifGdpMq_R5POOHv0MW2rkZSugsvmVr-kknsJMIAcYAAF74T_TB9RRQR5m6OB1z/s400/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="232" /></a><b><b>Introduction:</b></b><br />
My name is Ellen Bulford Welch and I am a second year PhD student in English Literature. Before coming to Sheffield I did my BA in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and an MPhil in American Literature at the University of Cambridge. </div>
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What do you research?</div>
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My current research focuses on the figure of the Gothic author in nineteenth-century America. My thesis works from the premise that pejorative Gothic identities were routinely attributed to practitioners of the Gothic in the literary criticism of the period. In other words, Gothic texts were assumed to be an extension of the dark realities inhabited by their authors. I argue that critics frequently upheld this paradigm by imagining Gothic authors in the roles of traditional Gothic villains, such as witches, ghosts and demons (unsurprisingly, there are many colourful examples of this Gothicisation surrounding writers like Edgar Allan Poe and the infamous 'Monk' Lewis). My thesis also examines the impact of this discourse upon the practice of Gothic authorship, from the adoption of Gothic subgenres designed to provide all of the sensational trappings of the genre whilst simultaneously denouncing or parodying it, to anonymous or pseudonymous publication. </div>
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<b>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</b></div>
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It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when my interest in the Gothic started. When I think about it, I have always been drawn to fiction and poetry with a Gothic aesthetic. When I was growing up I loved books like Jill Murphy's <i>The Worst Witch</i> series and was a big fan of TV shows like <i>Ghost Hunter</i> and <i>Mona the Vampire</i>. I went through the obligatory <i>Twilight </i>phase as a teenager and am still a sucker (pun intended) for paranormal American dramas from <i>Buffy </i>to <i>True Blood</i>. I've always been interested in the darkness that seems to lie at the heart of a lot of fairytales and folklore and I was delighted when doing an A Level Module in the Gothic to discover Angela Carter's evocation of these undertones in <i>The Bloody Chamber</i>. As well as her adaptation of traditional fairytales, I also loved the decadent Gothicism of her imagery, an aesthetic that I have since enjoyed in works like Baudelaire's poetry and Guillermo del Toro's <i>Crimson Peak</i>. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Grant Wood's 'American Gothic')</td></tr>
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My specific interest in the American Gothic dates back to writing my undergraduate dissertation on Charles Brockden Brown. I find it fascinating just how at home the Gothic always seems on American soil. So much of the nation's history has been imagined through a Gothic lens and the Gothic dominates America's literary canon to a greater degree than most modes of writing. </div>
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<b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b></div>
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Like most keen Gothicists I would definitely recommend reading many of the classics of the genre: <i>Wuthering Heights</i>, <i>The Turn of the Screw</i>, <i>Dracula</i>, <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> and stories by Poe, Le Fanu, Lovecraft and Arthur Machen (especially the extremely chilling <i>The Great God Pan</i>). I could go on ... </div>
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I think it's always really interesting to read the Gothic works of authors who are not habitually associated with the genre. Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Gaskell and Louisa May Alcott all wrote significant bodies of Gothic fiction that are both a far cry from and bear intriguing similarities to their more well-known, non Gothic corpuses. My next aim is to read the Gothic tales of E. Nesbitt. </div>
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On a more contemporary note, I recently devoured Dan Simmons' <i>The Terror</i>, a fictional interpretation of the fate of the much mythologized Franklin expedition. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but the novel provided an amazingly powerful, not to mention terrifying, evocation the Gothicism of the arctic landscape. </div>
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In terms of television, earlier this year I really enjoyed watching the BBC's supernatural thriller, <i>Requiem</i>. The show did a really spooky job of weaving a Gothic mythology around the attempts of the Tudor occult philosopher and general polymath, John Dee, to communicate with divine beings. </div>
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<b>If you could invite any Gothic writer, artist, musician or character to dinner, who would you choose and why?</b></div>
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There's a long list, but if I had to narrow it down then I would definitely invite the contentious and little-known early-nineteenth-century author, John Neal. His prefaces are some of the most cantankerous and audacious that I have ever encountered and I would love to see if his personality was as larger-than-life in reality as it is on the page! The fictional character at the top of my shortlist would undoubtedly be<i> Buffy</i>'s Rupert Giles. As far as I'm concerned no one could be cooler than a librarian with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the occult.</div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-34703519123988800782018-07-11T11:00:00.000+01:002018-07-11T12:01:32.230+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog - Celine Frohn<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Sheffield Gothic's next instalment in our series of profile blogs sees Celine Frohn, PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield, explore her interest in the Gothic, some of her favourite Gothic texts, and who she would invite to dinner!</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcJ0LiLMzuSvVGklI-lKMbBpG03iO6he4ZBS8QutJbfDtz0c5Yku9T7a-hxsTDowplua4QnLKCrQZ0HR9RYDB-_A54NOtxejkcdTYPAodttRgo6xLL0xjnm-GQPqhxz1fFkxy_OIEohxX/s1600/c-frohn-250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="250" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcJ0LiLMzuSvVGklI-lKMbBpG03iO6he4ZBS8QutJbfDtz0c5Yku9T7a-hxsTDowplua4QnLKCrQZ0HR9RYDB-_A54NOtxejkcdTYPAodttRgo6xLL0xjnm-GQPqhxz1fFkxy_OIEohxX/s400/c-frohn-250.jpg" width="400" /></a><b></b></div>
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<b><b>Introduction:</b></b><br />
My name is Celine Frohn, and I’m a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. I was born in the Netherlands, where I completed my BA in Cultural Studies at Tilburg University, and an MA in Cultural History at Utrecht University.</div>
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<b>What do you research?</b></div>
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My research is on a relatively little-known genre of stories from the mid-nineteenth century, called penny bloods (or penny dreadfuls). These cheap periodicals from the 1840s were read almost exclusively by a working-class audience. Their sensational and melodramatic nature made them unappealing for the respectable middle class. I’m interested not only in delineating the genre boundaries of the penny blood, but also in describing how these blood-thirsty yet entertaining stories combine the macabre and humour. How, and why, are these stories funny, and who is laughing? An avenue I’m looking into is how the Gothic and laughter in penny bloods are connected, working together to give rise to a wide range of emotions in the reader. I am currently working on the first story featuring Sweeney Todd, called <i>A String of Pearls</i>.</div>
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The Netherlands, my country of birth and the place I spent the first twenty-or-so years of my life, doesn’t have a tradition of the Gothic in the way the United Kingdom has. While there were plenty of 'scary' books in the children’s section of the library (called griezelboeken), there was no equivalent as I grew older. Within the Dutch literary field, there is little room for tales of terror, stories that push against the limits of the real and the imaginary. Perhaps this is why I have been drawn more to Anglophone books, reading abridged versions of <i>Frankenstein </i>and <i>Dracula</i> at a young age. It was mainly supernatural creatures, or humans transgressing the boundaries of our world, that fascinated me: vampires, werewolves, and especially witches. My scholarly interest followed when I started studying cultural history, and I discovered how Gothic texts digest and react to societal anxieties.</div>
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<b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b></div>
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<b>Music: </b></div>
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<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXOkXyWCxmypjRIRmvgpkFK85GdNVFGS_JY888GS7b9ntjO8avNaQCl6W5aEzdnnUVUnLIHgtRQZnX2bkKyOxc_s0u-oVPB39cK4xJdiAQvdZTHydd8NXMktxMLwXHchb2dD7bNcg-928V/s1600/tumblr_olxh2lHb8m1qzkl12o1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXOkXyWCxmypjRIRmvgpkFK85GdNVFGS_JY888GS7b9ntjO8avNaQCl6W5aEzdnnUVUnLIHgtRQZnX2bkKyOxc_s0u-oVPB39cK4xJdiAQvdZTHydd8NXMktxMLwXHchb2dD7bNcg-928V/s320/tumblr_olxh2lHb8m1qzkl12o1_500.gif" width="320" /></a>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Ghost – This band revels in satanistic imagery, and turns every gig (called rituals) into a Gothic carnival. For Ghost, everything is about theatre and staging. The band members are masked 'ghouls,' and the front man is replaced every album. After Papa Emeritus III’s failure to conquer the planet, Cardinal Copia is now charged to spread the dark gospel.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Emilie Autumn – Incorporating a neo-Victorian aesthetic and referring to traditionally Gothic places like asylums and prisons, Emilie Autumn blurs genre boundaries. Her songs often carry feminist lyrics and promote sisterhood.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Zeal & Ardor – Formerly a solo project, Zeal & Ardor is now a full band. Their music combines black metal with spirituals and slave song harmonics. Their songs are unsettling and aggressive, occasionally mixed with electronic influences.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>What We Do in the Shadows</i> (2014) – Directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, <i>What We Do in the Shadow</i>s is the best (okay, maybe the only) mockumentary about a group of New Zealand vampire housemates. Who cleans the carpet after bringing home a human to suck dry? Immortality only means that one can pile up the dishes even longer.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Penny Dreadful</i> (2014-2016) – This TV show actually introduced me to the term 'penny dreadful' and ultimately led me to my current research subject. <i>Penny Dreadful</i> is a mashup of nineteenth-century Gothic fictions, featuring Dorian Gray, characters from <i>Dracula</i>, and Frankenstein and his monster. Eva Green plays Vanessa Ives in one of my favourite acting performances.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Hemlock Grove</i> (2013-2015) – The first season of <i>Hemlock Grove</i> revolves around a series of unexplained killings. The main characters include vampires and werewolves, but in a gritty and gory version. The first season is wonderfully oppressive and engaging. I pretend the third (and last) season never happened.</li>
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD4VJtFkEyCR2Z0cZ3onEDFIOyRsYGMgz1Ed5zrC6uwRiTigvMjcdh4vSctDsHrCpiQFMoHONW08Mt-6sSLJ0RZqzjmiB-Q7pB3K-wKrnFwz8gb9T6DA1t-YlkGaYHjQxYDtTXAeIx23TJ/s1600/Sweeney+Todd+Polish+%2527em+Off.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1004" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD4VJtFkEyCR2Z0cZ3onEDFIOyRsYGMgz1Ed5zrC6uwRiTigvMjcdh4vSctDsHrCpiQFMoHONW08Mt-6sSLJ0RZqzjmiB-Q7pB3K-wKrnFwz8gb9T6DA1t-YlkGaYHjQxYDtTXAeIx23TJ/s320/Sweeney+Todd+Polish+%2527em+Off.jpg" width="200" /></a><b>Books:</b></b></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Dead Witch Walking</i> (2004) by Kim Harrison – The main character, Rachel, is probably my favourite witch of all time. The Hollows series is set in a mild post-apocalyptic contemporary setting that brought supernaturals into the open, and the stories are a great combination of each book resolving a certain contained mystery while at the same time slowly revealing more about the world itself, and Rachel’s place in it.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>The String of Pearls</i> (2007) by James Malcolm Rymer (edited by Dick Collins) – Penny bloods as a whole can be drawn-out beyond the patience of a modern reader, but the original 1846-7 version of <i>The String of Pearls</i> is pretty snappy, melodramatic, and wonderful.</li>
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<b>Games:</b></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Alice: Madness Returns</i> (2011) – This adaptation of the <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> story is the sequel to a 2000 video game, <i>American McGee’s Alice</i>. In this game, Alice works through a traumatic past in increasingly threatening and psychedelic game levels. The game has an interesting commentary on trauma and memory.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Bioshock </i>(2007) – In this shooter, something in a 1960s underwater man-made utopia has gone horribly wrong. <i>Bioshock</i> is probably one of the most imaginative and immersive shooters I’ve played; and the sequel <i>Bioshock: Infinite</i> is equally good.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Super Meat Boy</i> (2010) – In this 2D platformer you are Meat Boy, a red hunk of meat, that faces giant saw blades that will shred him apart when touched. Since this game is very difficult, playing it feels like a metaphor: we are all just gristle for the machines, and if you fail, it’s pretty much your own fault.</li>
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I can’t choose! Instead of a dinner, can we just have a party with all of the authors and their creations, while Ghost perform in the background? Although, how do we prevent the monsters from making us into their dinner? I guess it might overall be a slightly unsettling experience anyway…</div>
The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-44872292949402600962018-07-04T11:00:00.000+01:002018-07-09T11:49:44.230+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Emily Marlow<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The next instalment in our profile blog series focuses on Emily Marlow, PhD researcher at SIIBS at the University of Sheffield. Read as Emily explores what drew her to the Gothic, her favourite Gothic text, and who she would like to invite to dinner! </i></div>
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<b><b>Introduction: </b></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc5q496ZuqC-7y87Mjva66gFSF626WhqoLVM6RMY0Lf9gw-tNwyLQUnH_5eKaMwHe2Og_6kCE6V_qWC9rOelIlgr7LHUzw7RULT7W6aR5D7Ocf4phjWCdLz5dzuL5sz80qwob51iXixnxq/s1600/image1+%25284%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc5q496ZuqC-7y87Mjva66gFSF626WhqoLVM6RMY0Lf9gw-tNwyLQUnH_5eKaMwHe2Og_6kCE6V_qWC9rOelIlgr7LHUzw7RULT7W6aR5D7Ocf4phjWCdLz5dzuL5sz80qwob51iXixnxq/s320/image1+%25284%2529.jpeg" width="240" /></a>Hi, my name is Emily and I'm a PhD candidate with the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (SIIBS) part of The University of Sheffield. I'm a First Class BA (Hons) and MA graduate of the University of Sheffield, born in Tauranga, New Zealand, who grew up in Coffs Harbour, Australia before settling in Sheffield, in the United Kingdom. You can follow my work on my website <a href="http://www.emilymarlow.co.uk/">http://www.emilymarlow.co.uk</a>, or follow me on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/EmilyRMarlow">@EmilyRMarlow</a>.<br />
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<b>What do you research?</b></div>
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Broadly I look at religion in video games, film and other media. Specifically, my PhD looks at the journey of Jesus in film, to Jesus-figures in film, to Jesus-figures in video games. This means I get to study Jesus films like Martin Scorsese’s <i>The Last Temptation of Christ</i> and the popular musical <i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i>, Jesus-figure films such as the<i> Captain America </i>series, and finally video games from the North American game studio BioWare, who often feature Jesus-figures as playable characters. I use queer game studies to look at how we can play with religious narratives in media. </div>
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<b>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</b></div>
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I was never really aware that the media I loved was part of a larger genre that we know as ‘Gothic’, and only realised it when I first became acquainted with Sheffield Gothic. Now that I’m more familiar with Gothic definitions I can see that it has always been a large part of my favourite texts.</div>
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As a child I was fascinated by film, art and books. I was raised in a theatre family, which meant that early on I had seen, or been in, several plays that I now realise were inherently Gothic (<i>Little Shop of Horrors</i> anyone?). I loved dark thrillers and supernatural television, such as the X-Files and Twin Peaks. The earliest Halloween costume I remember wearing was Wednesday Addams (my brother was Pugsley), and I remember feeling an immense sense of kinship with her character. Who wouldn’t want to live in that house?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqo5jr5gVQPlwiNUZxwk03TkBhmN6swuuLiirpOArDghKrYPoC77_Hdx6CQhdAUlyWNn9A7Aomf6svcbqzO7uoiYnM61n0fD_exvuP923YsKef1KdGTu1Pkhdxi_S98ycbkctM6TnUG1Gd/s1600/149267.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqo5jr5gVQPlwiNUZxwk03TkBhmN6swuuLiirpOArDghKrYPoC77_Hdx6CQhdAUlyWNn9A7Aomf6svcbqzO7uoiYnM61n0fD_exvuP923YsKef1KdGTu1Pkhdxi_S98ycbkctM6TnUG1Gd/s1600/149267.jpg" /></a><b>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</b>As problematic as he is, I would firstly recommend Stephen King. King has a special place in my reading life – the first ‘adult’ book I ever tried to read was his baffling psychic political adventure <i>The Dead Zone</i> (1979). I still feel that <i>It </i>(1986) is one of the scariest books I have ever read, and finishing it felt like a real achievement. While <i>The Shining</i> (1977) is not my favourite book, I recommend readers check out its sequel<i> Doctor Sleep</i> (2013), which in my opinion features some of the most creatively written vampires in literature.</div>
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I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention my absolute favourite Stephen King book (and probably a good contender for my favourite book of all time), <i>The Stand</i> (1978/1990). In this King tries his hand at creating an American version of Tolkien’s <i>Lord of the Rings</i>, and it is a complete tour de force of characterisation, a dynamic fight of good and evil, and above all, delightfully Gothic.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWLQbDwKL79afQJ7ocrs7JNFW7VLLIHGbsBuiKgoDL0bRXACNKh4Yf0cZg7_iJCnqoTECtef0opBNy6mJVQVOxWkREcxNZ-DU9Sv_F4EaAn6tL-alSxcuL3KiAwpsT4wpMqhRprQmsdtt/s1600/The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-PS4-Box-Art+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="629" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWLQbDwKL79afQJ7ocrs7JNFW7VLLIHGbsBuiKgoDL0bRXACNKh4Yf0cZg7_iJCnqoTECtef0opBNy6mJVQVOxWkREcxNZ-DU9Sv_F4EaAn6tL-alSxcuL3KiAwpsT4wpMqhRprQmsdtt/s320/The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-PS4-Box-Art+%25281%2529.jpg" width="251" /></a>I’m a bit of a Stanley Kubrick fanatic, but instead of recommending the (in my opinion, perfect) <i>The Shining</i> (1980), I’d suggest readers try out Kubrick’s last film, <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> (1999). This reimagining of the 1926 French novella <i>Traumnovelle </i>(Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler, is sumptuously dark, agonisingly erotic and beautifully acted. Beware if you, like me, find masks a bit spooky!</div>
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As far as games, I recommend playing <i>The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt</i> (2015). <i>Witcher </i>is a great example of solid storytelling in games and is completely shot through with Gothic references and motifs. I love that I get to study <i>Dragon Age: Inquisition</i> (2014) as part of my PhD and as Lauren Nixon reminds me regularly, this too is incredibly Gothic.</div>
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For comics I’d recommend Neil Gaiman’s <i>The Sandman</i> series or Alan Moore’s <i>From Hell,</i> both of which are excellent works that transcend their genres.</div>
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Lastly, I can’t not mention possibly my all-time favourite Gothic text – the rock opera/musical that is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i>. To me this demonstrates everything that is good in both Gothic media and theatre. It has spectacle, drama, technical skill and horror. Every time I see it I am completely enraptured – it’s just perfect to me.</div>
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<b>If you could invite any Gothic writer, artist, musician or character to dinner, who would you choose and why?</b></div>
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I’d probably want to have a whole host of characters, rather than creators – characters are much more entertaining! ;) I’d include John Constantine (and specifically the Keanu Reeves version of the character), Geralt of Rivia (his awkwardness at dinner parties notwithstanding), Eric Northman (who would hopefully not eat anyone), Dorian Gray (for conversation and devilishness), Lisbeth Salander (the ultimate in Gothic heroines), Gomez and Morticia Addams (the greatest married couple in fiction) and finally Hannibal Lecter (who would also hopefully not eat anyone). I can just see it now…</div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-31997954155457647472018-07-03T11:17:00.001+01:002018-07-03T11:24:53.794+01:00Announcement: Reimagining the Gothic Creative Competition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Reimagining the Gothic 2018: Aesthetics and Archetypes</b></h3>
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<b>Creative Competition</b></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sheffield Gothic is delighted to announce our 2018 Reimagining the Gothic creative competition!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Each year as part of Reimagining the Gothic we hold a creative showcase: an opportunity to explore the theme through various creative methods. This year, that theme is Gothic Aesthetics & Archetypes - think everything from ruined castles, memento mori and gargoyles to Racliffean heroines, Byronic vampires and The Cure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The aim of the creative showcase is to offer alternative insights and rethink Gothic conventions through a variety of creative mediums. In the past we've had photography series', music videos, dramatic pieces and short films. Want to get involved? This years competition is now open!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All submissions will have the opportunity to be displayed at the Creative Showcase on Saturday 27th of October, where the winners will be announced after our creative keynote from comics writer Kieron Gillen. Any and all are welcome to submit creative pieces in all shapes and forms that explore, imagine and challenge the theme in anyway. Want to design the costumes for a potential adaptation of your favourite Gothic work? Or adapt it for a Graphic Novel? Great! Want to rewrite a classic Gothic trope from a new angle? Wonderful! Feel like taking atmospheric photos of a haunted ruin at night? I mean, be careful, but sure! Got an idea but not the creative skills to realise it? Group projects are also welcome!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The competition is for submissions of all kinds, and the winning entry will receive a £75 Amazon gift card and a copy of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Wicked + The Divine</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>Rules and Regulations:</u></b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">1) The work must be original. </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">You're welcome to riff off, be inspired by and reinterpret any existing works (copyright allowing) but all entries must be original pieces.</span></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">2) Submissions must abide to the Sheffield Gothic code of conduct.</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The Gothic is a language of anxiety, taboo and the other and we encourage submissions to fully interrogate and explore those themes. However we reserve the right to refuse any submissions that are intentionally offensive, contain hate speech or are unnecessarily aggressive.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">3) Entrants must have permission to have their pieces displayed.</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> We welcome submissions from all ages, all over the globe (so long as we can in some display them!) from either single creators or teams. However if your work has been previously shown elsewhere or commissioned as part of another project, or you are submitting on behalf of a group or another individual you must have permission to do so</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">The closing date for entries is Monday 17th September. Submissions should be sent to <a href="mailto:reimagininggoth15@gmail.com">reimagininggoth15@gmail.com</a> with a short bio - we may also ask for a short written piece explaining the ideas and process behind your piece for the showcase.</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">If you have any questions, or want any further information then don't hesitate to contact the team at </span><a href="mailto:reimagininggoth15@gmail.com" style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">reimagininggoth15@gmail.com</a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">. We purposefully keep the themes as open as possible to encourage a variety of interpretations, but we're always happy to answer any questions or queries!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">@SheffieldGothic | </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold;">@TheReimagining </span></div>
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</span>The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-21604018087933231172018-06-28T12:05:00.000+01:002018-06-28T12:05:16.404+01:00Artistic vampires, obsession and reality denying mechanisms in ‘The Oval Portrait’<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the third and final part of a blog series by Alan D. D. exploring Edgar Alan Poe and the Gothic. You can read his first post discussing Poe's 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' in relation to death and immortality <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/immortality-and-death-matters-in-facts.html">here</a>, and his second post examining the human mind in 'The Fall of the House of Usher' <a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/05/places-influencing-human-mind-in-fall.html">here</a>.</span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY40ika2tBEFYryIExgEYpszcYXWrF58e6WtlQxX8DBCnvs_wqKsixUPFw_ALUbVfp1zWRhuQlFaiEJOGGAl2EpwlHiOtoG12BDKn6nL4YUdT1lguc78JgDwqZeWFqwvORuqcGhvi67JSs/s1600/The+%25E2%2580%259CThompson%25E2%2580%259D+Daguerreotype+by+William+A.+Pratt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="461" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY40ika2tBEFYryIExgEYpszcYXWrF58e6WtlQxX8DBCnvs_wqKsixUPFw_ALUbVfp1zWRhuQlFaiEJOGGAl2EpwlHiOtoG12BDKn6nL4YUdT1lguc78JgDwqZeWFqwvORuqcGhvi67JSs/s400/The+%25E2%2580%259CThompson%25E2%2580%259D+Daguerreotype+by+William+A.+Pratt.jpg" width="306" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">('The "Thompson" Daguerreotype' by William A. Pratt)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many have written about the effects of art on
humankind. One could not even imagine what life would be with no creative
objects to be appreciated, with no paintings, no music, no drawings, nothing at
all. A person may not have the ability to create, but everyone appreciates a
descent sensitive distraction depending on personal likes. Art is defined by
the Oxford dictionary as ‘the expression or application of human creative skill
and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,
producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’
(Oxford Dictionaries, 2018.). It is interesting to note that creativity,
evidently, is linked with the words creator and creation, and one could even go
further and assume it is also a connection to the concept of a Creator, be it a
deity, a mysterious force behind life itself or a scientific event like the Big
Bang, but the association couldn’t <span style="font-family: inherit;">be more obvious.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, it is also reasonable that the power to
create also confirms the power to destroy. Is art, no matter its many forms and
shapes, capable of destroying as much as it is capable of creating? Edgar Allan
Poe seemed to think so, and I am a sceptic to the idea that this was just a
coincidence to find such a proposal in one of his stories.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘The Oval Portrait’ presents a rather unsetting plot:
an anonymous traveler, who is also injured, finds refuge in an abandoned
mansion in the Apennines, and in the night discovers a painting with a
disturbing story, that of an artist that turned the soul of his wife, which was
also the model, into a piece of art and so killing her: ‘the painter (who had
high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day
and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and
weak.’ (Poe, 1845). The first thing I can think about is that this is clearly
some form of obsession-leaded vampirism. It is not enough for this artist, this
husband, to slowly steal his wife’s life in an attempt to immortalize her, so
he needs and has to complete the painting, not even aware that he would widow
right away, making an artist, which also means a creator, a destroyer of life
as well (Meyers, 2000.).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5204MYYhPmuXNa_KJR5Lf2LaERqYG2C1_BAaPoSS03R4xov6iTy3NxeMQ9oogKlwIVr-dAFfI-bLwmiQzhvO0s0ZdZs6QzN-4z0Qbu0Oig8qlDxVRY2KpnY56_75ybXBsmJU2zWM4OI6/s1600/The+Oval+Portrait%252C+by+Jean+Paul+Laurens.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="341" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5204MYYhPmuXNa_KJR5Lf2LaERqYG2C1_BAaPoSS03R4xov6iTy3NxeMQ9oogKlwIVr-dAFfI-bLwmiQzhvO0s0ZdZs6QzN-4z0Qbu0Oig8qlDxVRY2KpnY56_75ybXBsmJU2zWM4OI6/s400/The+Oval+Portrait%252C+by+Jean+Paul+Laurens.JPG" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">('The Oval Portrait' by Jean Paul Laurens)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Vampires have also been linked with obsession by
different psychological conditions. Medicine has a term for this mania to drink
blood: Renfield Syndrome. This syndrome is named after a character in Bram
Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>, and it is interesting to note that individuals who are
part of vampire cults ‘may also demonstrate certain psychopathologies such as
dissociation, obsessive thought, delusional thinking, and hallucinations’
(White & Omar, 2010: p. 192.). This becomes relevant when we discover that
Poe’s first version of this tale, titled ‘Life in Death,’ published in <i>Graham's
Magazine</i> in 1842, included details on how the narrator had been wounded and
that opium was used to relieve the pain. However, the author eliminated this
part of the narration for considering it made the story be seen as a
hallucination (Sova, 2001.).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It doesn’t matter if the narrator is living this or
only imagining it. Either way, it is clear that this characters has some kind
of mental imbalance just like the artist, for it is stated that the narrator ‘thinking
earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half
reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait’ and more explicitly that ‘in
these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep
interest’ (Poe, 1845.).Yet, I’m inclined to think that maybe there was
something worse, something Poe tried to avoid and process, when he wrote this
tale, if we consider that ‘horror stories are a means through which artists
implicitly comment on the state of human affairs at a particular moment’
(George & Green, 2015: p. 2345.).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was around this time, when ‘The Oval Portrait’ was
written, that Poe’s wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, started a health decline
that would end on her dead in 1847, (Silverman, 1991,) and which the writer
himself stated made him ‘insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity’ (Poe,
1848.). This could suggest that Poe had an ambiguous, bittersweet relationship
with his work: although it offered him a distraction from reality, an escape
from the inevitable event that would cause him a severe depression, maybe he
felt his art was somehow murdering his own wife. He didn’t need to be part of a
vampire cult, for in his mind he was a vampire already.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">These creatures have been linked with sexuality,
sexual desire and liberation (</span><span lang="EN-US">Hughes, 2012,) but
it is clear that obsession, death and life also play an important role on the
figure of the vampire, which, apparently, is also capable of becoming an
artist, ‘the creator of beautiful things,’ (Wilde, 2014,) given the impact and
influence this tale had. Some may be familiar with a certain Mr. Gray, which story
was inspired by this tale of Poe, and whose writer praised Poe’s work five
years before Gray was born (Sova, 2001.).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">References</span></b><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sova, D. B. (2001). <i>Edgar Allan Poe A to Z:
The Essential Reference to His Life and Work</i>. New York: Facts on File.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Letters
- E. A. Poe to G. W. Eveleth (January 4, 1848). (2018). Retrieved from </span><span lang="ES-VE"><a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4801040.htm"><span lang="EN-US">https://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4801040.htm</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
George, D. R., & Green, M. J. (2015). Lessons Learned From Comics Produced by Medical Students: Art of Darkness. <i>Jama</i>, 314 (22), 2345-2346.
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Hughes, W. (2012). Fictional Vampires in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In D. Punter, <i>A New Companion to
The Gothic</i> (pp. 197-210). </span>New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons.<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Meyers, J. (2000). <i>Edgar Allan Poe: His Life
and Legacy</i>. New York: Cooper Square Press.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Oxford Dictionaries. (2018). Retrieved from </span><span lang="ES-VE"><a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/art"><span lang="EN-US">https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/art</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Poe, E. A. (1845). The Oval Portrait. Alex Catalogue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Silverman, K. (1991). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance</i>. New York: Harper
Perennial.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">White, M., & Omar, H. A. (2010). Vampirism,
vampire cults and the teenager of today. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International
journal of adolescent medicine and health</i>, 22(2), 189.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Wilde, O. (2014). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Picture of Dorian Gray</i>. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved June
13, 2018 from </span><span lang="ES-VE"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm</a></span></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Alan D. D. is an author, blogger and journalist who has been freaking the world since 1995. Hailing and writing out of Venezuela, Alan D.D. has worked with books, comics, music, movies and almost anything else that catches his attention. 99% of the time, it's something about witches. He's currently trying to get his first novel in English published and searching for a 24/7 chocolate supplier.</i></div>
</span></i>The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-7498781613856503612018-06-26T11:05:00.000+01:002018-06-26T11:05:28.335+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Andrew Smith<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The next instalment in Sheffield Gothic's series of profile blogs focuses on Andrew Smith, co-director of the <a href="http://www.sheffieldhistoryofthegothic.group.shef.ac.uk/">Centre for the History of the Gothic</a> at the University of Sheffield, and he explores his interest in the Gothic, his favourite Gothic text, and who hewould like to invite to dinner!</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-R99EsA3iKBe_aXjIrCw-fgNUA-cwTDlmZWPHcfbW0TR9rloBnQY64Blko61O36TGdR1MGM7OZ5L7GD72mMhXDj5UszulmYwEXYX5-ad6alnH6j4L4fXzWABrFfQNZmxKihyphenhyphenRL_QEGoKx/s1600/A.Smith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-R99EsA3iKBe_aXjIrCw-fgNUA-cwTDlmZWPHcfbW0TR9rloBnQY64Blko61O36TGdR1MGM7OZ5L7GD72mMhXDj5UszulmYwEXYX5-ad6alnH6j4L4fXzWABrFfQNZmxKihyphenhyphenRL_QEGoKx/s320/A.Smith.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><u>Introduction:</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Andrew Smith is Professor of Nineteenth-Century English
Literature at the University of Sheffield where he co-directs the Centre for
the History of the Gothic. His 20 published books include <span class="foreign"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gothic Death 1740-1914: A Literary History</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(Manchester University Press 2016<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">); <span class="foreign">The Ghost Story
1840-1920: A Cultural History</span> </i>(Manchester University Press 2010) and
<span class="foreign"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Victorian Demons:
Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the fin-de-siècle</i></span>
(Manchester University Press 2004). His best-selling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gothic Literature </i>(Edinburgh University Press 2007), was revised
and republished in 2013. He co-directs four books series, ‘Gothic Literary
Studies’ and ‘Gothic Authors: Critical Revisions’ for the University of Wales
Press, ‘The Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic’ for Edinburgh University Press
and ‘Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century’ for Manchester
University Press. There have been 48 titles published across the series. He is
currently writing <span class="foreign"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gothic
Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One</i>
for Edinburgh University Press. He is a past President of the International
Gothic Association.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="foreign"><b><u>What do you research?</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I have published on Gothic literature from the eighteenth
century to the present day although my main focus has been on Gothic texts
published in the nineteenth century. I’m currently writing a book about ghosts
stories and World War One as my two previous monographs (on the history of the
ghost story, and on death) stopped before the war, so it felt like a period I
was avoiding although I was conscious that it needed a book to itself to do it
justice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am interested in how the
Gothic uses certain tropes to capture historically specific forms of anxiety –
so, for example, how it is that the disembodied form of the ghost embodies
concerns about money (in the nineteenth century) and the problem of the
returning soldier (in and after World War One).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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As a child growing up in the early 1970s my parents allowed
us to watch 1930s horror films on the TV on the grounds that they were so daft that
they couldn’t be frightening. Not so. I found werewolf films particularly
harrowing because so often the ostensible hero became, under lunar influence,
transformed into the villain. In a child-like pursuit of moral clarity I would
close eyes and pretend that they were separate beings which, of course, then
made the plot-lines utterly unintelligible. In my early teenage years I
discovered Herbert Van Thal’s Pan Book of Horror series and was hooked. As an
undergraduate and as a postgraduate I became interested in the type of
provocative cultural work undertaken in the Gothic and wrote my PhD on how a
Gothic tradition from the 18thc to the late 19thc critically interrogated an Idealist
tradition from Kant to Freud, which in turn became my first monograph, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gothic Radicalism </i>(Macmillan 2000).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</u></b></div>
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Almost anything by Poe. Poe is both horrifying and funny
(although funny peculiar perhaps), by turns and I find that an interesting
blend. You can also see it in M.R. James’s ghost stories which I’m working on
at the moment. I’ve also enjoyed more recent publications such as Andrew
Michael Hurley’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Loney</i> (2014) and
his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Devil’s Day</i> (2017). I don’t tend
to watch much horror on film – my wife’s not at all keen so we don’t go to the
cinema to see such films, although she has been known to sit through the
occasional Hammer House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still think
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Exorcist</i> (1973) is amazing,
especially how it builds tension. I saw Aronofsky’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mother!</i> (2017) on a plane recently, which was genuinely shocking
even if a little predictable as a Biblical allegory, but an interesting and
serious horror film.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><u>Who would you invite to dinner?</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve always been intrigued by the recipes that you find at
the beginning of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dracula</i>, so perhaps
eating through some of those with Bram Stoker would be appropriate. Poe would,
I fear, be a nightmare dinner guest but M.R. James would be charming, I think. I’d
invite Ann Radcliffe but I’d probably be too nosey about her life and she’d
make a quick exit. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-44795782298789536832018-06-19T17:07:00.001+01:002018-06-21T11:49:54.819+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Kathleen Hudson<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The next instalment in Sheffield Gothic's series of profile blog focuses on Kathleen Hudson (Anne Arundel Community College), one of the founding members of Sheffield Gothic and eternally our Goth Queen. Read on to find out Kathleen's interest in the Gothic, her favourite Gothic text, and who she would like to invite to dinner! </i></div>
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Greetings, goths! My name is Dr. Kathleen Hudson, and I’m a researcher studying Early Gothic Literature. I earned my undergraduate degree at the University of Scranton and my Masters and PhD degrees at the University of Sheffield. In addition to working as a web developer for the International Gothic Association and the Centre for the History of the Gothic, I have also been a member of the Sheffield Gothic Reading Group for several years and was one of the founding members of the Re-imagining the Gothic Project. I currently work as an adjunct faculty member at Anne Arundel Community College and my first book, entitled <i>Servants and the Gothic: 1764-1831, A half-told tale</i>, is scheduled to be published by University of Wales Press in January 2019. </div>
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<b><b><u>What do you research?</u></b></b></div>
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My main focus is on servant narratives in early Gothic novels, plays, and chapbook adaptations. Servant characters are frequently included in these works, and my research specifically looks at instances where Gothic servants tell stories or gossip to other characters. Such tales are often compact in-set Gothic narratives and offer fascinating insights into the way the Gothic mode is structured and into the gender and class identities that shape them. While my work mostly focuses on the early Gothic mode, it also has implications for books, TV shows, and movies up to the present day.</div>
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<b><b><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b></b></div>
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I actually became interested in the Gothic as a research area in a very roundabout way. I was never overly interested in scary or creepy things as a child, and it wasn’t until I went to university that I started looking seriously at Gothic and horror works. One of the first things I invested in as a new college student was a Netflix subscription. This was back in the days when the streaming service was still very limited, but many of the movies that you could watch whenever you wanted seemed to be cheesy, gory horror films from the 1970s and 80s. I watched Evil Dead, Reanimator, Dead Alive, The Thing, Alien, and all these great classic movies and was utterly fascinated by them. Curiosity about how the filmmakers managed to scare and shock turned into an interest in the reoccurring engagements with psychological issues and human fears and the way those elements were then represented visually in film. </div>
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My interest in Gothic horror remained in the background of my academic life until I took the “Rise of the Gothic” course at the University of Sheffield while getting my Masters Degree in Nineteenth Century Studies. In that class I started to see where many of the elements of horror and humor I so appreciated in my favorite films came from. I learned about the literary origins of haunted houses and villainous parents and thoughtful heroines and developed a new appreciation for the mode as an evolving examination of the very basic building blocks of the human psyche. </div>
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Servant characters and their narratives then emerged as an extension of this interest – they embody many of the elements that intrigued me and were key to understanding how fear and grief and family were reflected through narrative self-expression. I started to focus on why these characters kept popping up and how specific servants were similar or different from others, and that lead me to my fascination with Gothic servant narratives as a whole.</div>
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFZOabZjPDlGapvYNjPdOQpAnrAw-PNqgLGnweQwJwVSiKVuT_ch-uGx9vEkPCQmz4tK81DliMYSCQ6ipin8ZjSHIgE8IMZ-rT49gC1AIhN7uvbmFzqFpdKKJheLbVwe-LedM_HV4RM3z/s1600/Blog-Picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="461" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFZOabZjPDlGapvYNjPdOQpAnrAw-PNqgLGnweQwJwVSiKVuT_ch-uGx9vEkPCQmz4tK81DliMYSCQ6ipin8ZjSHIgE8IMZ-rT49gC1AIhN7uvbmFzqFpdKKJheLbVwe-LedM_HV4RM3z/s320/Blog-Picture.jpg" width="220" /></a><b><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</u></b></b></div>
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<i>The Mysteries of Udolpho</i> by Ann Radcliffe </div>
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This is a classic text and it will probably surprise no one when I include it, but in all honesty, it is one of those books that I finish reading and then immediately want to reread again. Radcliffe’s work is an amazing collection of individual vignettes, complex set-pieces, and individual studies of people. She creates an amazing fictional world that is at once fantastic and very recognizable and personal, and this is absolutely my favorite novel of hers. </div>
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<i><i>Frankenstein </i>by Mary Shelley </i></div>
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This is another one that feels a bit cliched to include, but in terms of classic Gothic must-reads this is one of the essentials. Shelley’s work is just a profound study of humanity and it never ceases to blow me away. You think you know the story but it’s a tricky text with complex psychological implications – and watch out for the subtle political jabs and the undercurrent of feminist angst. </div>
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<i><i>Vampire City</i> by Paul Féval </i></div>
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This one is cheesy and camp and wonderful, and despite some truly goofy moments it is also surprising creepy. It takes all of the more extreme elements of the Gothic and embeds them in an off-the-wall work of what is essentially nineteenth century fan fiction, and the results are a profoundly unsettling re-imaging of the mode. This book also includes my favorite depictions of vampires (which is saying a lot) – they depart from almost every recognizable trope and in some ways are very silly and outlandish, but they also violate and reshape their victims in terrifying ways that really speak to the spirit of the vampire myth. </div>
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<i><i>House of Leaves</i> by Mark Danielewski </i></div>
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Profoundly beautifully and profoundly unsettling re-imagining of the Gothic haunted house and the boundaries of space, time, and narrative. It’s one of the few books I’ve read that genuinely scared me, but it also makes you think. I reread it every year or so and I always find something new in it to chew on. </div>
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<i><i>Slade House</i> by David Mitchell </i></div>
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Part anthology, part vampire story, and part revision of the classic haunted house trop, this book gave me massive existential dread. </div>
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<i><i>The Evil Dead Trilogy</i> directed by Sam Raimi </i></div>
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As some of the first films that really inspired my love of horror and the Gothic, these three movies – Evil Dead, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness – will always hold a very special place in my heart. They cross horror and gore and “The Three Stooges”-style comedy, but they also don’t shy away from exploring the fragile boundaries between humor and horror and the impact the absurd has on the unstable ‘self’. </div>
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<b><u>Who would you invite to dinner?</u></b></div>
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I’d probably invite Annette and Ludovico from The Mysteries of Udolpho and Theodore from The Monk to dinner – they’re all chatty servants and I imagine dinner would devolve into one big Gothic storytelling competition before too long.</div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-45259084029786550932018-06-19T17:07:00.000+01:002018-06-19T17:07:08.603+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Maisha Wester<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Sheffield Gothic are thrilled to announce our series of profile blogs, where you can get to know the members and friends of Sheffield Gothic and find out the answers to questions you have always wanted to asked us like what drew us to the Gothic and what's our favourite Gothic text! Today we have honorary Sheffield Goth and visiting Fullbright scholar at the University of Sheffield, Maisha Wester. </i></div>
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<b><b><u>Introduction:</u></b></b></div>
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I'm Dr. Maisha Wester, a visiting Fulbright Scholar for the 2017-2018 academic
year. I'm an Associate Professor at Indiana University specializing in race in
Gothic literature and Horror film. I am joint-appointed in American Studies,
and in African American and African Diaspora Studies.</div>
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<b><u>What do you research:</u></b></div>
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I received my Ph.D in English from University of Florida during a period when
the department was wonderfully interdisciplinary. I studied and continue to use
a variety of literary and cultural studies methods, such as psychoanalysis,
Lacanian semiotics, postcolonial theory, feminist analysis, and critical race
theory. My research specifically investigates the depictions of racial,
sexual and gender difference in Gothic literature and Horror films.
Furthermore, I also interrogate mobilizations of Gothic tropes and
discourses in socio-political discussions of race and immigration. Equally
important, I write on Black Diasporic Gothic literature as it responds to
oppressive racial ideologies and expresses the peculiar horrors of navigating
societies which construct racial minorities as abject and/ or phobogenic
objects.</div>
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<b><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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I grew up a fan of horror films and Gothic literature,
preferring Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock to tween romances. I remember
reading Edgar Allan Poe when I was 8 years old, particularly the poem 'The
Raven' and the story 'The Tell Tale Heart.' Given I grew up in Miami where
violent crime was nothing unusual and where we were taught the horrors of
Chernobyl knowing nuclear plants were all around the U.S., I think as a child
it was easier to process the terror of reality through monsters and fiendish
villains—at least there was a clear way to defeat Freddy Kruger (wake up or
seize control of your dream), avoid Jason (don’t go camping), and escape
Michael Myers (run out of the house, not upstairs). Further, the villains in
Gothic texts always made more sense than the villains in real life, and had a
habit of explaining themselves/ their motives. Gothic villains were also far
more interesting than your average Disney hero(ine).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.)
would you recommend and why?</u></b></div>
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This
could get long but I’ll try to keep it brief-ish:</div>
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In
no particular order….</div>
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<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Monk</i>: just too fabulous for words; the text is a grand,
bloody soap opera</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island
of St Domingo</i>: By Bryan Edwards, this first-hand account reads like Gothic
fiction and is far better horror than most of the stuff Stephen King has
written.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Wuthering Heights</i>: this novel is not only
beautifully written but, in Heathcliff, creates an anti-hero that becomes the
reference point for so many of today’s dark, brooding, invariably screwed-up
lovers. More importantly, reading it at different points in my life reveals
different things about myself: as a teen, I thought Heathcliff’s passion was
amazing and dreamed of such a romance; as an adult, I realized that Catherine is
a manipulative wench and Heathcliff is the model of an abuser. But the novel
never pretends that they are anything different—indeed, no one is really
likable in that novel if you look closely enough. But Bronte left it to the
reader to look or not look.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Hawthorne’s short fiction, especially 'Young Goodman
Brown,' and 'The Birthmark': his short stories really exemplify the racial
angst and quandary early Americans attempted to repress.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">'Benito Cereno': This novella (which Melville considered
a short story!!) wonderfully depicts the social and racial dynamics produced by
the Haitian Revolution and critiques America’s position in the event. Equally
important, it reveals the complexity of abolitionists (they weren’t utterly
virtuous/ progressive in their racial ideals)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The short stories of Flannery O’Connor: She is amazing at
representing the grotesque beauty of the South but her plots and endings leave
your perplexed, and ill at ease…which is what a great Gothic work does.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Invisible Man:</i> funny, horrifying and
splendidly musical (not lyrical, Ellison wrote jazz and blues structures into
this novel), I could easily spend a month teaching this novel and look to teach
it again the next year. There is so much depth and richness to this text; more
disturbingly, it remains relevant to the current moment.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Cane</i>: Jean Toomer’s 'novel' is a collection of
short fiction and poetry punctuated by a concluding section which is as much
novella as it is play. But all of these pieces fit seamlessly together to depict
the haunting beauty of the South, the alienating hope of the North and the
terror of dislocation. This book is a complex puzzle.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Mama Day</i>: This novel straddles the line between
Gothic and Magical realism. It is lovely and heart-breaking every time you read
it. The first time I taught this novel, it was in a class where a zoology
student, who declared her hatred or reading, finished the book in one night (I
had to beg her not to skip ahead in discussion for those who hadn’t finished,
she was so excited to discuss what came next).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">'The Child Who Favored Daughter': my Ph.D adviser
recommended this Alice Walker story as one which would haunt me…she was right.
It is poetic and understanding in its depiction of the father’s monstrosity.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Octavia Butler's <i>Kindred</i>: though Butler is
largely identified as a writer of Afro-futurist speculative fiction, this novel
captures the horror of history for African Americans and, more importantly, of
trying to come to grips with that history and your consequent origins. The
novel posits the assaults on bodily and psychic integration from grappling with
the knowledge that you may be the descendant of enslaved people, rape victims
and rapists; and worse, without the horrible institution of slavery, the modern
black subject wouldn't exist in America--that is truly grotesque and horrifying
to acknowledge... 11a. Damian Duffey's
and John Jenning's graphic adaptation of <i>Kindred</i>: absolutely
beautiful artwork which really captures the text's horror and beauty.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>House of Leaves</i>: A postmodern novel which
experiments with structure and yet still terrified me; the monster never
appears but Danielewski creates such an atmosphere of lurking terror that the
novel’s play with structure is hardly noticeable at points. Don’t read this one
alone in the dark</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>I Walked with a Zombie: </i>This beautiful film
has been termed <i>Jane Eyre</i> in the Caribbean. It’s
cinematography is stunning, its use of sound profound, and its narrative of
white colonialism and black rebellion subtle but striking; it is, indeed,
radical in its messaging.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Cat People</i>: Simply beautiful</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Night of the Living Dead</i>: we wouldn’t have the
modern zombie without this film (which actually terms its monsters ghouls, not
zombies)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>IT</i> pt 1 (the tv version, not the recent
film): Tim Curry’s performance as Pennywise was so terrifying I had nightmares
for weeks and started sleeping with a nightlight, though I was a teen when the
tv movie came out.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Michael Jackson's Thriller: this video was the
first of its kind and left a definite mark on the cultural landscape (everyone
can at least recognize the zombie dance from this video) </i></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i> Little Shop of Horrors</i>: A giant, singing venus
fly trap with the baritone voice of Levi Stubbs (one of the Four Tops) and
Steve Martin as the sadistic, rocker dentist are just a couple of the marvelous
treats in this classic musical horror (which has some amazingly infectious
songs).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Sweeney Todd</i>: absolutely beautiful
cinematography. And while Burton provides the backstory which makes Todd a
sympathetic antihero, he doesn't try to humanize him, as most productions do.
Todd is a monster and remains so throughout the film; but so too is the rest of
London society. Lastly, I love the way the stage makeup depicts Todd and Lovett
as vampires, in juxtaposition to the rest of cannibal society. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i>Rocky Horror Picture Show</i>: Need I say anything,
really....</li>
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I could definitely go on but I should probably stop at some
point.....<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><u>Who would you invite to dinner:</u></b></div>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Montressor from Poe's story "The Cask of Amontillado" because I
want a definitive explanation of what Fortunado did that warranted living
burial.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The unnamed protagonist of <i>Invisible Man</i> because
I want to know a) how he managed to steal electricity from NY for so long so
well, b) if he really understands his grandfather's dying words, and c) if he
actually left his hole (and, if so, did he go find Bledsloe and make him eat
chitlins). </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Hannah Crafts, author of <i>The Bondswoman's
Narrative</i>, just to settle the argument of her identity and the nature of
the text (Gates says she was an escaped enslaved woman but the text is so
intertextual--rewriting <i>The Castle of Otranto</i> in its first
chapters--that it seems a bit difficult to accept the text as a slave
narrative).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Neil Gaiman because he is cool, well-researched, and
brilliant--I just want to be his buddy (even if I found <i>Anansi Boys</i> problematic,
but no friend is perfect). </li>
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<i></i>The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-57960982706422229702018-06-14T11:00:00.000+01:002018-06-19T17:07:43.279+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Angela Wright<br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The next instalment in Sheffield Gothic's series of profile blogs focuses on Angela Wright, co-director of the <a href="http://www.sheffieldhistoryofthegothic.group.shef.ac.uk/">Centre for the History of the Gothic</a> at the University of Sheffield, as she explores her</span></i><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> interest in the Gothic, her favourite Gothic text, and who she would like to invite to dinner!</span></i><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Introduction:</u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Angela Wright, Professor of Romantic
Literature in the School of English at the University of Sheffield, former
Co-President of the IGA (2013-17) specialising in Gothic poetry and prose of
the Romantic period.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Major publications include: <i>Britain, France and the Gothic,
1764-1820: The Import of Terror</i> (Cambridge University Press, 2013) which was
shortlisted for the Allan Lloyd Smith memorial prize; with Dale Townshend, <i>Ann
Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic</i> (Cambridge University Press, 2014), with
Dale Townshend, <i>Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion</i> (EUP, 2015); <i>Mary
Shelley</i> (University of Wales Press, 2018). I am currently working with
Catherine Spooner and Dale Townshend upon a major 3 volume <i>Cambridge History of
the Gothic</i>, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, upon an
edition of the works of Ann Radcliffe with Michael Gamer, and a further monograph 'Fostering Romanticism'. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>What do you Research:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I specialise in Gothic literature of the Romantic period,
and write upon both canonical and non-canonical authors of that period. So, for
example, I have written books, chapters and essays upon well-recognised authors
of the Gothic, such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis and Mary
Shelley, but I have also written upon less well-celebrated works, such as the
'Northanger Novels' that Jane Austen's Catherine Moreland read so excitedly in
her <i>Northanger Abbey</i>, particularly those by Regina Maria Roche and
Eleanor Sleath, the early Gothic novels of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
lesser-known Gothic works upon the Catholic Inquisition for an essay in a
collection called <i>Spain and British Romanticism, </i>eds. Ian
Haywood and Diego Saglia. There are hundreds of Gothic works during the
Romantic period that we don't talk about or read, and not all of them are
merely 'poor imitations' of the works of Radcliffe and Lewis. So I think that
there is still a huge amount of excavation and research work to be
carried out in this period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I became interested in the Gothic as an early teenager.
I'd scare myself by reading too many ghost stories and walking home past the
local graveyard. From these early fears and frissons, I looked for ways in
which to account for my fears, and that led me to the Gothic genre. I took my
first degree in English and French at the University of Stirling, and studied a
great module with David Punter called 'Ghosts and Terrors', and then a PhD upon
the Gothic novel and drama in Britain and France at the University of Aberdeen.
My dual interest in the literatures of Britain and France led to the 2013 book
'The Import of Terror', which examined the issues of translation and imitation
in the Gothic traditions in both Britain and France, and how these forms of
reciprocity undercut and belied the military hostilities between the two
nations in the long eighteenth century. With its testing of the borders between
subject and object, self and other, the Gothic became the perfect vehicle by
which authors could work against the cultural hostilities evinced by their
nations. This is still working today! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a confession to make: I cannot watch Gothic horror
movies which involve blood and gore without passing out, and so do not venture
much into contemporary Gothic horror films. But of course I would recommend
reading anything by Ann Radcliffe, particularly <i>The Romance of the Forest</i>,
<i>The Mysteries of Udolpho</i> and <i>The Italian</i>, Matthew Lewis's <i>The Monk</i>, anything
at all by Mary Shelley (and definitely not just Frankenstein). For more
contemporary iterations of the Gothic, I love the films of Guillermo del Toro,
particularly <i>Crimson Peak</i> and <i>The Shape of Water</i>; Elizabeth Kostova's <i>The
Historian</i> and the fiction of Patrick McGrath. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>Who Would you invite to dinner?</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dead? Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, to see if they
could resolve their aesthetic differences. Alive? Guillermo del Toro. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Addendum</i>:</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I'd also invite John Polidori, Mary Shelley and Robert Smith to dinner. I want Polidori and Mary to clear up disagreements on what was and was not read at the Villa Diodati in 1816. Robert Smith from The Cure would sing divinely.</span></div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-91030344979881500612018-06-07T11:04:00.000+01:002018-06-07T11:04:47.082+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Hannah Moss<div>
<i>Next in Sheffield Gothic's series of profile blog feature's our own Hannah Moss (PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield). Read on to find out how Hannah became interested in the Gothic,</i><i></i><br />
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<i><i> what her favourite Gothic texts are, and who she would like to invite to dinner!</i></i></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Introduction:</u></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My name is Hannah Moss, and I’m a PhD candidate in the School of English at The University of Sheffield. Having completed my undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature at Sheffield, I returned in 2014 to study for an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies – and that’s when I became involved with Sheffield Gothic. Students on Prof. Angela Wright’s fantastic Rise of the Gothic module were told about a reading group we’d be welcome to attend, and the rest is history. In the Gothic post-graduate community I’ve found an incredibly intelligent and supportive group of friends and colleagues, who encouraged me to present my first academic paper at Reimagining the Gothic: Monsters & Monstrosities.</span><br />
<b style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;"><u><br /></u></b></b>
<b style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>What do you research?</u></b></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My research is centred on the representation of women’s art in novels of the long eighteenth century (1760-1830). My aim is to reappraise the Romantic-era conception of the artist as a tortured male genius by exploring how women’s creativity extends beyond the idea of female accomplishment. The female artist is a familiar figure in the Gothic novel, with the arts often providing the heroine with agency and an avenue of self-expression to communicate what cannot be articulated. There’s a distinct Gothic thread to my research given the tendency for the boundary between representation and ‘reality’, the artist and her art, to become blurred. What’s more, the female artist depicted entering the male territory of a professional painter or sculptor is often transformed into a monstrous figure. Alongside the works of Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith and Mary Shelley, I am keen to incorporate non-canonical works into my research. The Corvey Collection is a veritable treasure trove of Belles Lettres which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the period 1790 – 1840 (but more on that later).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="275" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd39LwF7ViASscYSApgOK6VX-BmMILS2z0cZuM4UwMz7cELam1ikvmGa33Hw9mJNmsogFdXjgM_W2Uekm-Ss2ITOvDFGyImoBssYL0efJYhFU9iynQc2TZ0-MW5VI4lhDmBV3qwC1w11Lh/s320/corvey.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="238" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The library at Schloss Corvey, Germany</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think that I’ve always been drawn to the Gothic without really realising it. Looking back, childhood favourites always included witchcraft and wizardry, a creepy castle or an enchantment of some kind – I mean, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Beauty and the Beast</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is very Gothic! I loved reading Jill Murphy’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Worst Witch </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">series and R.L. Stine’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Goosebumps</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> books, whilst the TV show </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Are you Afraid of the Dark?</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> never failed to give me the creeps (in a good way). It was only at university that I realised that most of the novels I enjoy tend to be Gothic novels: </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Northanger Abbey</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Mysteries of Udolpho</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Wuthering Heights</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Jane Eyre</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Frankenstein</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> are all firm favourites.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyone who knows me will know that my favourite pastime is wandering around castles, abbeys and country houses, rich with layer upon layer of history. Derbyshire and South Yorkshire are home to so many places that have sparked my research interests over the years that I could write enough for a whole series of blog posts!</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoaSAjXhJycY5KZAP6up1PW5fFCJqE8Vuclo0Ci6Hr6Z0FDO_C7Mz4mee9FrBwGwzUkIiNc4iIWcNLIo89cOLQLo11pBH5nEUTNx3KMcC0ebRWPT4mT6B51nBqZLwfborLMvv-i60DVkF/s1600/arbella.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoaSAjXhJycY5KZAP6up1PW5fFCJqE8Vuclo0Ci6Hr6Z0FDO_C7Mz4mee9FrBwGwzUkIiNc4iIWcNLIo89cOLQLo11pBH5nEUTNx3KMcC0ebRWPT4mT6B51nBqZLwfborLMvv-i60DVkF/s320/arbella.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arbella Stuart</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hardwick and Haddon, in particular, are said to have inspired Ann Radcliffe, and it’s easy to see why. I’m particularly drawn to the stories of the women who lived (or were imprisoned) in such places. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was held under house arrest at numerous properties in the area, including Wingfield Manor (now an incredibly atmospheric ruin), whilst Arbella Stuart (1575-1615) lived a restricted life at Hardwick Hall as the ward of her Grandmother, Bess. Her proximity to the crown led many to believe Arbella would be Elizabeth I’s successor, but this placed her in a dangerous situation. Having secretly married William Seymour without royal consent, the couple concocted a daring escape plan, only for Arbella to be captured, ending her days in the Tower of London - this could easily form the plot for a Gothic novel! I came to eighteenth century gothic after a period reading lots of historical biographies, and sometimes the circulating library plots don’t seem quite so outlandish in comparison. Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821) loved to devour horrid Gothic novels even though her own sister had mysteriously disappeared after fleeing from an abusive husband, possibly dying whilst giving birth to an illegitimate child. Caroline used the Gothic as a means of comparison to paint herself as a heroine and vocalize the plight she faced as the wronged wife of George IV (be warned, I can change any conversation to George IV’s wives and mistresses).</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</u></b></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always seem to end up recommending </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Wuthering Heights,</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> so I’ll take the opportunity to recommend a non-canonical woman writer, a kids’ book series, and some period dramas I’ve recently enjoyed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As I mentioned earlier, I spend a lot of time searching through the digitized Corvey Collection (Which I like to imagine is a lot like the library in </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Beauty and the Beast</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> in real life). I’ve recently been reading Caroline Horwood’s novels </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Castle of Vivaldi, or The Mysterious Injunction</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (1810) and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">St. Ostberg, or The Carmelite Monk</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (1811). Heavily influenced by Ann Radcliffe, but without the inset poetry and prolonged landscape description, the pages are crammed with everything you’d expect from an early Gothic novel – there’s incest, illegitimacy, bigamy, adultery, abduction, animated statues, mysterious warnings, forged manuscripts. She’s a new favourite!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not just for kids, Chris Riddell’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Goth Girl</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> series is packed with in-jokes anyone with knowledge of early Gothic literature and Regency history will absolutely love, plus there’s a healthy dose of pop culture thrown in for good measure. I frequently have to explain to my niece why I’m giggling at the introduction of characters such as Mary Shellfish, the bestselling author of The Monster, or, Prometheus Misbehaves, or Dr Jensen, the cleverest man in England, who arrives with his biographer in tow. Also, the hardback editions are beautiful objects in themselves with gilded page edges, really detailed illustrations, and plenty of footnotes to train the next generation of Gothicists.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As I’m still waiting for an Ann Radcliffe adaptation, my film pick will have to be </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Crimson Peak </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(2015). The plot won’t be a surprise to anyone who has read a lot of Gothic romance, but watch it as a Guillermo Del Toro take on the genre and revel in the aesthetic as he interprets the tropes. Can we start a campaign to get Tom Hiddleston to read the audio book of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Udolpho</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I love a period drama, and there has been a few good Gothic offerings from the BBC over the past couple of years.</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: inherit;">The Living and the Dead</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">: I reviewed this series for the Sheffield Gothic blog back in 2016 (you can read that post </span><a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2016/09/is-living-and-dead-thomas-hardy-with.html" style="font-family: inherit;">here</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">) – and it’s basically a Thomas Hardy adaptation with a supernatural twist. The central premise is that a rural community is haunted as technological advancement unearths all sorts of ghosts. Without giving too much away, it’s really interesting how the series plays with time, so you question who is actually haunting who.</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: inherit;">Taboo</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">: Tom Hardy in a series set in 1814, need I say more? That’s all I require from my TV viewing. Ok, well Ridley Scott has described it as a ‘dark, dirty brute of a drama’ so if that doesn’t sell it to you I don’t know what will. When James Delaney returns from Africa to claim his inheritance it gets him into serious trouble - and Mark Gatiss is a truly grotesque George IV. It was a slow burner, but built to a (quite literally) explosive conclusion. I’m very happy to hear that series two has just been given the green light by the Beeb. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Tom Hardy)</td></tr>
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<i style="font-family: inherit;">The Woman in White</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">: I enjoyed seeing Wilkie Collins’ sensation novel adapted even if Count Fosco had shed more than a few pounds and lost the pet mice. Watching this reminded me just how many echoes of Collins’ work are to be identified in Sarah Waters’ </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Fingersmith</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, which we recently covered as a </span><a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/04/gothic-adaptations-fingersmith.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Reading Group text.</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> This semester we’ve also watched the ITV adaptations of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://sheffieldgothicreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2018/02/gothic-adaptations-wuthering-heights.html">Wuthering Heights</a></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (2009) and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Northanger Abbey</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (2007) – both of which are brilliant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Theatre: I thought Nick Dear’s adaptation of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Frankenstein</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (2011), directed by Danny Boyle, was so great that I went to see it twice as a National Theatre Live broadcast. Both times I saw Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor, so I still need to see the reverse casting next time there is a rerun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As for music, well a cheesy Halloween playlist is guaranteed to make me smile at any time of year. The IGA Goth disco is the highlight of every Gothicist’s calendar and Kate Bush’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Wuthering Heights</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and Billy Idol’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">White Wedding</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> will always take me back to Mexico.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the resident art specialist, I’m going to add some art suggestions to the mix: James Gillray’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Tales of Wonder</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (1802) is a great satire on the craze for Gothic novels at the turn of the century; Henry Fuseli’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Nightmare</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (1781) is one of those pieces of art that you see referenced everywhere, whether reimagined as a satirical print or recreated as a tableau in film, whilst any Claude landscape feels like looking into an Ann Radcliffe novel. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Claude Lorrain, Ideal View of Tivoli, 1644)</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Who would you invite for dinner?</u></b></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Erm, let me think about that one for a second… Mr Tilney! He lives in an abbey, he reads Ann Radcliffe novels, and boy does he know his muslin. All that pretty much makes him the perfect dinner companion in my book.</span><br />
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</span>The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452961603216012359.post-3700301962481210382018-05-31T11:00:00.000+01:002018-06-19T17:07:33.083+01:00Sheffield Gothic Profile Blog: Tim Moffatt <br />
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<i>Sheffield Gothic's next installment in our series of profile blogs sees Tim Moffat from the University of Sheffield explore his interest in the Gothic, his favourite Gothic text, and who he would like to invite to dinner!</i></div>
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<b><u>Introduction<span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tim
Moffatt – PhD Researcher in The School of English, University of Sheffield<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u>What do you research:</u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am
researching the films of Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky through the
lens of Hauntology, to determine how his seven films (and the three student
ones) are cinematically haunted by Stalin’s policies of the 1930s. In response
to the research project I am also writing a play as part of the PhD which is
based around Soviet show trials and totalitarian persecution. This play centres
around a Soviet film director in the late 30s who finds himself imprisoned for
an editing mistake. As he awaits trial he reflects on key moments from his life,
only for those moments to appear not as he remembered. The play will see his
soul haunted by a constant questioning as to what is reality and what is
unreality, as he awaits his inevitable death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>How did you become interested in the Gothic?</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I first
became interested in the Gothic as a teenager. This was a time when I lived in
what was the village of Worrall, just outside of Sheffield. The family home was
the last one mid-way up a hill before you were surrounded by farmers’ fields. A
convent sat imposingly at the top of the hill. During the winter when the trees
were barren you could see the this magnificent Victorian Gothic building on the
horizon, and you would hear bells ringing at various times of day, though never
seeing any living soul wandering around up there, just the occasional light
emitting from a window. I found this mysterious building just up the road a
source of fascination; there was a small hidden medieval civilisation there, never
to be looked upon by anyone. Though I knew it was futile, I would stand outside
and watch for hours in the vain hope of seeing a nun, or indeed anyone. From
that point on I had an interest in the mysterious and uncanny. In 2002 I
visited Auschwitz, which was naturally a harrowing experience and really opened
my mind viscerally to the great evil that human beings are capable of. There is
an incredible darkness found in humanity, and this darker side of life also
became a source of interest and exploration as it is so alien to my own life’s
experiences. It is fascinating to me that if you ask any actor if they would
rather play hero or villain then most will say villain, which I say sheds some
light on human nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>What Gothic texts (including shows, films, plays, music etc.) would you recommend and why?</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I read </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Dracula</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> whilst holidaying in Whitby
several years ago and I would recommend doing this as an immersive experience.
There is a small fishing town located further up the east coast from Whitby
called Staithes which I visited twice. I naively and unfairly used to think
this was simply a tiny insignificant place, but there it is in full glory
mentioned in </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Dracula</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, classic work of
English Literature! Standing in the places Bram Stoker describes is an
incredible experience due to the unnerving feeling the text emanates, evoking
all kinds of Gothic resonances. I was disappointed with the end of Dracula, but
in truth that is because I did not want the book to actually end. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A more contemporary
Gothic work I have enjoyed is Andrew Michael Hurley’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Loney</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. This is a book that is peppered with the uncanny where everything
about the text just left me questioning what was truly going on beneath the
narrative. On the one hand nothing hugely terrifying occurs on the page, but
the sub-narrative is one that makes you realise that something potentially very
nasty had transpired in the past. The narrator describes a stretch of coastline
known as ‘The Loney’ which he would visit as a child. It is through this
narration that we uncover potentially strange and disturbing events involving macabre
rituals and witchcraft; a young girl may have extraordinary powers to heal the
sick… but we will never truly know the truth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The theme of the uncanny leads
into my film recommendation which has to be </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The
Wicker Man </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(1973)</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">from Hammer
Horror. This is a film that often divides opinion; people seem to love it or
hate it. Edward Woodward’s policeman visits the island of Summerisle to
investigate the disappearance of a missing girl only to discover a society
still in the grip of paganistic rituals. It is these rituals that lead to the
film’s incredible yet tragic finale which does leave some viewers a little hot
under the collar. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPnnSWsylG2GvFjrLw1UDk_nxeloJHrGr3wCiDdc1P8UkuPFVGwsh8eDTwzuqGJRFwMW27PtBEWxZKlDFh9QvkyGIe1fX_TO0IPkxCu6Gx0gq5LX41ZoF35mAPaoeWe_UQ3s8PezER6H1P/s1600/IMG_1619.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPnnSWsylG2GvFjrLw1UDk_nxeloJHrGr3wCiDdc1P8UkuPFVGwsh8eDTwzuqGJRFwMW27PtBEWxZKlDFh9QvkyGIe1fX_TO0IPkxCu6Gx0gq5LX41ZoF35mAPaoeWe_UQ3s8PezER6H1P/s320/IMG_1619.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">A piece of music I would recommend is Mozart’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Requiem </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">from 1791. This was the first
piece of classical music I ever bought and is an excellent way to embrace the
classical genre. It is a piece frequently heard throughout culture: tv, films,
video games, and takes the listener on a dark yet also spiritual journey.
Rumour has it that Mozart wrote it for his own funeral on his death bed and
surely you cannot get more poignant than that? My discovery of the composition
came through watching the film </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Amadeus </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(1984)
adapted from the play by Peter Shaffer which recounts the latter end of Mozart’s
life as he forms a bond with the jealous rival composer Salieri, who conspires
to damage Mozart due to Mozart’s greater talents. It is a Gothic tragedian tale
told through flashback as Salieri is now incarcerated in an asylum. Shaffer’s
other famous work </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Equus </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">is a truly
fascinating tale about a teenager called Alan Strang who blinds six horses with
a spike. Why he chose to do this is uncovered by psychiatrist Dysart through
Freudian psychological discussion. The finale is possibly still the most
powerful imagery I have witnessed in a theatre; frightening but also hugely
thought provoking.</span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><u>Who would you invite to dinner:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If I could
invite a Gothic character around for dinner I would probably choose Rick Grimes
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Walking Dead</i>. If anything it
would give him a bit of relief from the Southern Gothic space he constantly has
to occupy, fighting the carnivorous zombie ‘undead’ all day. However, I guess
meat would have to be off the menu, as it raises too many issues to mention!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Sheffield Gothic Teamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09780913345160694181noreply@blogger.com1